Clothing Definitions — definitions of garments and clothing terms from Apparel Search
Frock has been used since Middle English as the name for an article of clothing for men and women. Originally a frock was a loose, long garment with wide, full sleeves, such as the habit of a monk or priest, commonly belted — the origin of the term defrock, to eject from the priesthood. From the sixteenth century the word was applied to a woman's dress or gown. This page explains the frock's history, its dialect uses for men's outer garments such as the smock-frock, and dense knitted sailors' frocks such as the guernsey and jersey.
Originally, a frock was a loose, long garment with wide, full sleeves, such as the habit of a monk or priest, commonly belted. (This is the origin of the modern term defrock or unfrock, meaning "to eject from the priesthood").
From the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century, frock was applied to a woman's dress or gown, in the fashion of the day, often indicating an unfitted, comfortable garment for wear in the house, or (later) a light overdress worn with a slip or underdress.
Frock (especially in the phrase 'short frock') is also a child's dress or light overdress.
Frock's older meaning is retained in dialect words for men's outer garments:
A frock coat is a men's coat style of the nineteenth century, characterized by full skirts reaching to the lower thigh or knee.
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Socks - rhymes with smocks...
| The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/frock ) 8/5/05 |
Few clothing words have covered as much ground as frock. The monastic habit gives the word its first centre of meaning: a loose, belted, full-sleeved garment, dignified enough that its removal names the loss of office in defrock. The women's sense follows for four centuries — a dress or gown of the fashion of the day, often the unfitted, comfortable house garment or a light overdress worn with a slip — and in the phrase short frock, a child's dress. Both senses survive in modern use, where frock remains a common synonym for a woman's dress, especially in British and Australian English.
The working senses run in parallel. The smock-frock was the farm worker's protective overgarment of heavy linen, gathered and smocked at the chest, worn across rural England into the nineteenth century. At sea, a frock was a dense knitted overgarment worn by sailors and fishermen — the guernsey frock and jersey frock, now simply guernsey and jersey, names that became general sweater terms. The frock coat, the nineteenth-century men's coat with full skirts, takes its name from the same root: frock as the loose outer garment from which the priest's robe, the woman's dress and the man's coat all descend.
A frock was originally a loose, long garment with wide, full sleeves, such as the habit of a monk or priest, commonly belted. From the sixteenth to the early twentieth century it was applied to a woman's dress or gown, often an unfitted, comfortable garment.
Defrock, or unfrock, means to eject from the priesthood. It comes from the frock as the priest's or monk's habit — removing the garment stands for removing the office.
From the seventeenth century on, a frock is a thigh- or full-length loose outer garment worn by shepherds, workmen and farm workers, generally of heavy linen, now usually called a smock-frock.