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Crinoline   Listen
noun
Crinoline  n.  
1.
A kind of stiff cloth, used chiefly by women, for underskirts, to expand the gown worn over it; so called because originally made of hair.
2.
A lady's skirt made of any stiff material; latterly, a hoop skirt.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Crinoline" Quotes from Famous Books



... saw in imagination the strong, heavy-jawed, greedy, flat Parisian face, the mercenary eyes, the paint and powder, the frizzed hair, and the nosegay of gaudy artificial flowers under the high-pointed hat, the polished nails like talons, the hideous crinoline.... I could fancy too one of our sons of the steppes running with pitiful eagerness after the doll put up for sale.... I could fancy him with clumsy coarseness and violent stammering, trying to imitate ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... Miss Hob an' Miss Hall, Each dress'd i' ther jackets, new turban, an' fall, An' if you'd o' seen 'em you'd o' thowt they wor fine, Wi' ther nice parasols an' ther gert crinoline; But as they wor marchin' foaks sed at Miss Hob, Wor t'nicest and smartest young ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... extravagant, and hunted after the newest styles with the national energy which their countrywomen of a nobler class expended upon nobler objects; and were more ready to deform or ignore nature, and swear allegiance to the despotic rule of the Crinoline Sovereign, than any Parisian ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... there is much to be said for crinoline on hygienic grounds, and on those of cleanliness, must be obvious to its most prejudiced opponents."—Lady ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various

... were uncovered, and hair frizzled, and curled, and braided, and puffed, and arranged in every conceivable shape, showing that even to that "quiet town" the hairdresser's craft had penetrated. Expanded crinoline, with light, fleecy robes, and ribbons, and laces, and flowers, was there assembled, with bright, eager, healthful faces, and snowy hands wafting kisses to some departed friend, and then turning to greet some new arrival. There were no traces of sickness, no token of disease among the ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... the disadvantage of living in the middle ages. The crinoline had not quite reached its full circumference, and the dress-improver had not even been thought of. In all the Five Towns there was not a public bath, nor a free library, nor a municipal park, nor ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... STRANGE WINTER is taking Summer-y proceedings against the Coming Crinoline. Henceforth she will be always known as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various

... making snatches at one another, gradually assuming the characters of hunter and Red Indian. Only when the hunter had snatched up Aunt Jane's tortoise-shell paper-cutter to stab with, complaining direfully that it was a stupid place, with nothing for a gun, and the Red Indian's crinoline had knocked down two chairs, she recollected the consequences in time to strangle her own war-whoop, and suggested that they should be safer on the stairs; to which Ernest readily responded, adding that there was a great gallery at home all full of pillars and statues, the jolliest place ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... stood "Black Susy," surrounded with a wooden scaffolding like a lady in her crinoline, and on the scaffolding Paul and the foreman climbed busily about, hammering, ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann

... tidily placed on a chair by her bedside, or thrown carelessly, as they had been taken off, upon the hearth-rug, where her favorite spaniel reposed, warming his nose in his sleep before the last smouldering embers of the decaying fire; or whether her crinoline—but if she did wear a crinoline, what can that possibly matter ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... Miss Carlyle than that "brazen hussy," Afy Hallijohn! Smuggled in by Miss Carlyle's servants, there she was—in full dress, too. A green-and-white checked sarcenet, flounced up to the waist, over a crinoline extending from here to yonder; a fancy bonnet, worn on the plait of hair behind, with a wreath and a veil; delicate white gloves, and a swinging handkerchief of lace, redolent of musk. It was well for Miss Corny's peace of mind ever after that she remained in ignorance of that daring ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... of a candid, liberal, and unprejudiced examination,—we mean the important question, Whether the choicest of all substances, the most delicate of all muscular texture, that substance of which kings, philosophers, policemen, and supporters of crinoline are fashioned by the plastic hand of Nature, ought forever to be excluded from the reproductive process of wasted energy and proportionably consumed nervous and cerebral fibre. Reader, do not shrink; grant us a patient ear. You do not know how rapidly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... behind it, as Gypsy had left it when her mother sent her up to sweep the room that morning), and dressed it up in the three dresses, the cloaks and the cape, one above another, the chair serving as crinoline. Upon the top of the broom-handle he tied the torn apron, stuffed out with the rubber-boots, and pinned on slips of the geography leaves for features; Massachusetts and Vermont giving the graceful effect of one pink eye ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... the end of the story. As soon as the boilers cooled off they worked all right on those supply pumps. May I be hanged if they had not sucked in, somehow, a long string of yarn, and cloth, and, if you will believe me, a wire of some woman's crinoline. And that French folly of a sham Empress cut short that day the victory of the Confederate navy, and old Davis himself can't tell when we shall have ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... when the pavement was unusually patronized by young officers, these women would sally out, promenade in crinoline, silk stockings, and saucy hoods, and the crowd would fall respectfully back to let them pass. A flag hung from a hospital over the sidewalk, and with a pert flourish, the landlord's daughters filed off the pavement, around the ensign, and back again. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... diction, for instance, of the Greek choruses, or of the Scottish poets who followed Chaucer, or of the troubadours. That of the classic writers of an Augustan age was not of such a kind. Words clothe thought; poetic diction had the artifice of the crinoline; it would stand by itself. The Romantics in their return to nature had necessarily to ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... plain, to say the least of it. Round their waists and over their under-dress they pass a piece of silk, which is wrapped tight round the person. The result is as nearly as possible the opposite to the effect produced by a crinoline. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... dame's stringed mobcap, widow Twankey's crinoline and bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net, appears over the staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand, and cries out in shrill alarm) O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him! ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... is the way of Satan find their children leaving home to do these very things. Everywhere mothers wonder why daughters like short skirts, powder and perhaps rouge, when they were brought up on the corset, crinoline and the bustle; and they rebel against the indictment passed out broadcast by their children. "You are old-fashioned; this is the year 1921." When children grow up, their wills clash with their parents', even in the sweetest, and most loving of homes. Behind many a girl's ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... crush and crash upon each other, and timbers fly while men are swearing. But here there was neither crashing nor swearing; and the boats noiselessly pressed against each other as though they were cased in muslin and crinoline. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... land to the first manufacturer who would exhibit five gross of a home-manufactured article. But no one ever competed. The first attempts, indeed, were put to an end, when Schofield crossed the Blue Lick, and destroyed the dams on Yellow Branch. The consequence was, that people's crinoline collapsed faster than the Confederacy did, of which that brute of a Grierson said there was never anything of it ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... individual called on made his effort; the sleigh turned, indeed, but on its side, and the adventurous Miss Tremaine, summarily ejected, sank to her waist in the deep snow, her crinoline rising as she descended, spread out under her arms, looking like an inverted umbrella. Jack and Bluebell were suffocating with the laughter they vainly tried to hide, and Bertie, who was on foot, took in the situation at once, and ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... secret springs of her action. Wishing to spare her as a member of the defenceless sex, it pains us to say, that, ingenious as her counterfeit walking is, she is an impostor. Worse than this,—with all our reverence for her brazen crinoline, duty compels us to reveal a fact concerning her which will shock the feelings of those who have watched the stately rigidity of decorum with which she moves in the presence of admiring multitudes. She is a quadruped!. Inside of her great golden boots, which represent one pair ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... and we should go in rags because we cared for nobody. Rents would go down. Parties wouldn't be given any more. All the tradesmen of the town would be bankrupt. Wine, wax-lights, comestibles, rouge, crinoline-petticoats, diamonds, wigs, Louis-Quatorze gimcracks, and old china, park hacks, and splendid high-stepping carriage horses—all the delights of life, I say,—would go to the deuce, if people did but act upon their silly principles and avoid those whom they dislike and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... her, and they stood irresolutely balancing on alternate slippers. "Did you notice," the former volunteered, "mother is letting Camilla have lots of starch in her petticoats, so that they stand right out like crinoline? Wasn't she hateful this morning!" Laurel heard a slight sound at her back, and, wheeling, saw her grandfather looking out from the library door. A swift premonition of possible additional misfortune seized her. Moving toward ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... dinner as you doze each e'en, From your disjointed mutterings I glean Your mind is running on a crinoline, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various

... as crinoline and the novels of G. P. R. James,' answered our host, lightly. But I, who was watching him closely, saw his eyes harden. Estes had said more than one imprudent thing that evening, and this time he had gone too far. I would have to get the boy ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... was a plump young fellow, clad in summer garments and wearing a straw hat. He had but very little luggage with him, because it was so cumbersome in the great heat; he had, however, swimming-trousers with him, which are nothing to carry. Then came the mother herself, in crinoline, Madame AUGUST, a wholesale dealer in fruit, proprietress of a large number of fish ponds and a land cultivator. She was fat and heated, yet she could use her hands well, and would herself carry out beer ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... color, and the material, because she was given to understand that change and variety stimulated trade. Her most revolutionary act had been to readopt, one fine spring morning, the ample skirt of the crinoline period in order to counteract the distress and shortage of work caused in the textile trade by the introduction and persistence of the "hobble skirt." As a consequence of this sudden disturbance of the evolutionary law governing creation ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... women in crinolines, in hats with long trailing feathers and with ridiculous little parasols, or with Grecian- bends and chignons—church-parading to and fro beneath the trees or by the water's edge—perchance, even the fascinating Lady Crinoline and the elegant Mr. Macassar Jones, whose history has been written by Clerk Charley in the pages we are introducing to the 'gentle reader'. As a poetaster of an earlier ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... check apron, she looked what she was—a respectable servant in a respectable family; and the Boundaries so regarded her, as she passed through them, letter in hand. Martha, Lady Augusta's housemaid, answered the door, presenting a contrast to Judith. Martha wore a crinoline as big as her lady's, and a starched-out muslin gown over it, with flounces and frillings, for Martha was "dressed" for the day. Her arms, red and large, were displayed beneath her open sleeves, and something that looked like a bit of twisted lace was stuck ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... and, in that portion of the Archipelago where the native abaca plantations are, the entire dress of both sexes is made of coarse guinara. Still coarser and stronger fabrics are prepared for the European market, such as crinoline and stiff muslin used ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... Elysee assumed to govern everything, even the morals—above all the morals. It spread the paint on the bosom of women at the same time as the color on the faces of the men. It set the fashion for toilette and for music. It invented the crinoline and the operetta. At the Elysee a certain ugliness was considered as elegance; that which makes the countenance noble was there scoffed at, as was that which makes the soul great; the phrase, "human face divine" was ridiculed at the Elysee, and ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... dreamed a beautiful dream of a crinoline costume, beflowered and beflounced, such as Vogue had lately pictured as a forecast of autumn fashions, an iridescent bubble of a dream shattered by the query: "Where ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... surtout [Fr.], spencer^; mackintosh, waterproof, raincoat; ulster, P-coat, dreadnought, wraprascal^, poncho, cardinal, pelerine^; barbe^, chudder^, jubbah^, oilskins, pajamas, pilot jacket, talma jacket^, vest, jerkin, waistcoat, doublet, camisole, gabardine; farthingale, kilt, jupe^, crinoline, bustle, panier, skirt, apron, pinafore; bloomer, bloomers; chaqueta^, songtag [G.], tablier^. pants, trousers, trowsers^; breeches, pantaloons, inexpressibles^, overalls, smalls, small clothes; shintiyan^; shorts, jockey shorts, boxer shorts; tights, drawers, panties, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... it can be set right. Why, surely you remember, when you read me the scene in the manuscript you wrote just after our marriage, in which a good lady could not sit down upon a small chair, owing to her toupet, I—your admiring and awestruck wife—ventured to point out that a toupet was not a crinoline; and you were quite grateful, Ronnie. You did not consider me an unappreciative Johnny, nor even a mediocre person! Who has, unknown to me, ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay

... in confidence, several improvements designed to perfect the details of his invention, among which we may mention the steering arrangement and arrangements for attacking a vessel provided with what our contemporary, Engineering, not inaptly terms a "crinoline," i. e., a network for keeping off torpedoes. The transverse dimensions of our engravings have been considerably augmented for the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various

... that day to meet freaks in fishing-tackle. The next one to turn up was a kind of crinoline. This strange thing confronted us as we disembarked at Anamidzu. Anamidzu was the last port in the inland sea. After touching here the steamer passed out into the sea of Japan and tied up for the night at a small port on the eastern side of the nose ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... those high shoulders from her sleeves? Why should we pay any deference to a hideous fashion that will be extinct a year hence? Next to the unapproachable ugliness of 'crinoline,' I think these high-shouldered sleeves are the worst things invented for ladies in our time. Imagine how horrified they would be if one of their daughters were ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... idea. Up for bigamy. Say there was the fat blonde in Saint Jo, and the panatela brunette at Skillet Ridge, and the gold tooth down in the Kaw valley. Redruth gets his cases mixed, and they send him up the road. He gets out after they are through with him, and says: 'Any line for me except the crinoline. The hermit trade is not overdone, and the stenographers never apply to 'em for work. The jolly hermit's life for me. No more long hairs in the comb or dill pickles lying around in the cigar tray.' You tell ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... a matter of great importance to have the hose as strong as possible; and for this purpose, in some claims, it is surrounded by iron bands, which are about two inches wide, and are connected by four ropes which run perpendicularly down. The rings are about three inches apart. The "crinoline hose," thus made, is very flexible, and will support a column of water one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet high. The pipe at the end of the hose is like the pipe of a fire-engine hose, though usually larger. Sometimes the pipe will be eight inches ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell

... eyed, her light summer dress of the cheapest material, yet deftly fashioned by her own fingers from slightly opened neck, where an old brooch lay against her soft throat, down to the dainty spotless flounces lying above her petticoat of crinoline. ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple

... brain might be irritable for some days, and no women in silk dresses or crinoline, or creaking shoes, must enter the room. He told her the nurse was evidently a clumsy woman, and would be letting things fall. She had better get some old soldier used to nursing. "And don't whisper in the room," said he; "nothing irritates ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... She wore a straight, pale gray-green jacket, into the pockets of which her hands were thrust. Her skirt, of the same colour and material, hung in straight folds to her feet, being innocent alike of trimming and the then prevailing fashion of crinoline. Further, she wore a little, round matador's hat, three black pompons planted audaciously upstanding above the left ear. Her eyes, long in shape and set under straight, observant brows, appeared at first sight of the same ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... of Aunt Charlotte in Mamma's Album. She stood on a strip of carpet, supported by the hoops of her crinoline; her black lace shawl made a pattern on the light gown. She wore a little hat with a white sweeping feather, and under the hat two long black curls hung down straight ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... crinoline hoop-skirts over their shoulders; others brandished boots and shirts, and one glistening brave swung a banjo at arm's-length over his flying horse's head. Another party of the despoilers discovered a shipment of silks and satins. These they dragged in bolts from the packing-cases ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman

... "pipe-hole" or crack in the ceiling of the study below, those inanimate things would inevitably put their evil heads together, and bring to grief the long-suffering Dominie, with whom, during my day, such inundations had been of at least bi-weekly occurrence, instigated by crinoline. The inherent wickedness of that "thing of beauty" will be acknowledged by all mankind, and by every female not reduced to the deplorable poverty of the heroine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... in the old crinoline days. My aunt, who was then living in a country-town, had gone out shopping one morning, and was standing in the High Street, talking to a lady friend, a Mrs. Gumworthy, the doctor's wife. She (my aunt) had on a new crinoline that morning, in which, to use her own expression, ...
— Evergreens - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome

... aroused his ire were quite different from those of the present day. At that time, you must know, the Empire dress, that you have seen in portraits of the time of the first Napoleon, was all the fashion; no crinoline, skirts so extremely scant and gored that they clung to the figure like drapery upon a statue, and waists a finger and a half in depth, with inch-wide bands instead of sleeves. This style of dress was very graceful and becoming when worn by a woman of slender figure, and those who were not ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... dash about Maryanne Brown that at certain moments was invincible. Hooped petticoats on the back of her sister looked like hoops, and awkward hoops. They were angular, lopsided, and lumpy. But Maryanne wore her hoops as a duchess wears her crinoline. Her well-starched muslin dress would swell off from her waist in a manner that was irresistible to George Robinson. "Such grouping!" as he said to his friend Walker. "Such a flow of drapery! such tournure! Ah, my dear fellow, ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope

... against the railings). Fix your eyes upon the lady's skirt; the grey one will do—above the pink silk stockings. It changes; drapes her ankles—the nineties; then it amplifies—the seventies; now it's burnished red and stretched above a crinoline—the sixties; a tiny black foot wearing a white cotton stocking peeps out. Still sitting there? Yes—she's still on the pier. The silk now is sprigged with roses, but somehow one no longer sees so clearly. There's no pier beneath us. The heavy chariot may swing along the turnpike ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... the musicians. By careful counting, we find there are six hundred faces to the square inch in the more crowded portion of the scene which the view embraces,—a part occupied by the female singers. These singers are all clad in white, and packed with great compression of crinoline,—if that, indeed, were worn on the occasion. Mere points as their faces seem to the naked eye, the stereoscope, and still more a strong magnifier, shows them with their mouths all open as they join in the chorus, and with such distinctness that some of them might readily be recognized by those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... saddle-room, etc., and a good bedroom for English servants, and beyond that, again, among large clumps of rose-bushes, a native hut. It came up here half built—that is, the frame was partly put together elsewhere—and it resembled a huge crinoline more than anything else in its original state. Since that, however, it has been made more secure by extra pales of bamboo, each tied in its place with infinite trouble and patience by a knot every inch or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... With Queen Victoria we all went to church again in our Sunday clothes. You cannot date Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth by the fashions; but you can date Tennyson assuredly. He belongs to the top-hat and the crinoline; to Friends in Council and "nice feelings." True, there was nothing dressy about Tennyson himself. I doubt if he ever wore a top-hat. But is not The Gardener's Daughter in ringlets? Did not Aunt Elizabeth and Sister Lilia wear ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... Henry Ward Beecher's one novel, "Norwood," which appeared in America becomingly clad in a single volume, received in England the regulation three-volume dress, in which it looks as ridiculously inflated as did a slender miss of that period in the crinoline then in vogue. There is one abomination in book design for which I owe a personal grudge to commercialism, and that is the dropsical book form given to Locker-Lampson's "My Confidences." If ever there was a winsome bit of writing it is this, and it should have made a book to take ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... apt to forget the primary object of clothing, and to think of it too much as a means of adornment. This leads to excesses and follies such as tight waists, high-heeled shoes, to the ungainly crinoline or to indecent scantiness of skirts. Direct interference in these matters is badly tolerated, but much may be accomplished both by example and by cultivating a refined and artistic ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly

... laid a second palm, on the upraised booty, made one whole revolution, her soft crinoline ballooning and subsiding with a seductive swish as she paused: "And you shall share these blessings, grannie, love, although of the assets themselves"—she returned the bag to its sanctuary and smoothed the waist where the paper proceeds ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... horizontally on a base board beneath the spar. This apparatus when tried in the wind was found to be unmanageable by reason of the fluttering motions of the fabric, which was insufficiently stiffened with crinoline steel, but Mr. Wenham pointed out that this in no way invalidated the principle of the apparatus, which was to obtain large supporting surfaces without increasing unduly the leverage and consequent weight of spar required, ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... beautiful. Where is the poet, nowadays, even amongst the most brilliant, who knows what a woman is like? Where could the poor fellow ever have seen any? What has he ever been able to learn about them in the salons; could he see through the corset and the crinoline? ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... suddenly recollected with a blush that she was staring like a schoolgirl, and sat down. And he drew up a chair before her and seated himself; and then under the billowy rose crinoline she set her pretty feet close together, folded her hands, and looked at him with a smiling composure which she ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... idiocy. In my day, all such feeble watery minds as hers were regarded as semi-imbecile, pitied as intellectual cripples, and wisely kept in the background of society; but, bless me! in this generation they skip and prance to the very edge of the front, pose in indecent garments without starch, or crinoline, or even the protection of pleats and gathers; and insult good, sound, wholesome common sense with the sickening affectations they are pleased to call 'aesthetics.' Don't waste your time, and dilute your own mind ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... was by nature very small and mean in appearance; but she had puffed out her dress with crinoline and hoops to a size so immense, that she half filled up Matty's little parlour, and it was hard to imagine how she had contrived to squeeze herself through the doorway. She had seven very full flounces, each of a different colour, adorned with flowers and beads. Her waist had been pulled in ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker

... I assure you," returned Firebrand, with much earnestness. "Every iron-clad is provided with a crinoline, which is a powerful iron network, hung all round the ship at some distance from her, like—pardon me—a lady's crinoline, and is intended to intercept any torpedo that may ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... and from the fact that Mrs Lupex depended greatly upon her stays and crinoline for such figure as she succeeded in displaying, it may, perhaps, be understood that Mr Cradell did not ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... L. The crinoline may stand eventually for rough crystalline surface, unless you pin it in; and then you may make a polished crystal ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... nose. "I know some Ashtons who live in Brayanstone Square," she said at last. "A mother and son. A very handsome woman she is, with white hair, she has a sort of grande dame look about her—the sort of woman you can imagine in a powdered wig and a crinoline, curtsying to the queen." She scrambled up, and, snatching a paper fan from the shelf, swept Esther a graceful curtsy ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... corrupt or morally weak. A talented lady contributor to the ICONOCLAST once asserted that 'tis not for good women that men have done great deeds. Perchance this is true, for men who do great deeds are goaded thereto, not by the swish of crinoline, but by the immortal gods. Such acts are bred in the bone, are born in the blood and brain. It certainly is not for bad women that men soar at the sun, for every man worth the killing despises corruption in womankind. He worships on bended knee and with ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... is Constantia Grabowska, my daughter. My name is Joseph Grabowski; my late wife's brother, Monsieur Pelletier." Davos was puzzled by the name, Constantia Grabowska! She sat before him, dressed in black silk with crinoline; two dainty curls hung over her ears; her profile, her colouring, were slightly Oriental, and in her nebulous gray eyes with their greenish light there was eternal youth. Constantia! Polish. And how she played Chopin—ah! it came to him before he ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... as though I were not present. "And 'tis a hard game to play, if once my lady Helena takes it into her merry head to make it so for him. But if I sent one shorter of stature and uglier of visage and with less art in approaching a crinoline—why, perhaps he would get no farther than her door. No; he will serve—he ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough

... a wonder; but Mrs. Gibson was quite overcome. Mr. Babbage was very angry with Leah, whose back the horse actually grazed, as he all but caught his hoofs in her crinoline and hit her with a stirrup ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... wife, who sat for him on several occasions, and the results may be seen in Paris, Vienna, New York, and Madrid. Some of the portraits, painted without a suspicion of flattery, show the absurd head-dress, the false hair, and the extraordinary crinoline that were worn at the time, in all their ugliness, and force us to see how great was the distance lying between the royal house and any sense of beauty. Velazquez was not perhaps very happy with this work, because Nature had endowed Philip's wife with a ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan

... time, one of the most important features of the Refuge, is the workshop. On entering the shop, the visitor is amused by finding a lot of little urchins occupied in making ladies' hoopskirts of the latest fashionable design; nearly 100 are engaged in the crinoline department. In the same long room, about 50 are weaving wire for sifting cotton, making wire sieves, rat traps, gridirons, flower baskets, cattle noses, etc. The principal work, however, is carried on in ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... a wonderful grist of additional business to the Sheffield mill. The fair Eugenie has done a good thing for this smoky town, well deserving of a monument of burnished steel erected to her memory on one of these hills. More than this; as Empress of Crinoline, she should wear the iron crown of Charlemagne in her own right. Her husband's empire is but a mere arondissement compared with the domain that does homage to her sceptre. Sheffield is the great arsenal of her armaments. ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... gloves with judicious deliberation before getting into the carriage again, to give himself an excuse for allowing his eye to follow the young woman, whose skirts were pleasingly set out by something else than these odious and delusive crinoline bustles. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... enjoying the joke. One morning, when the train was a few minutes late, the guard came running up to the front with his 'Hurry up, Missis,' when the old dame, with her two baskets, an umbrella, similar in size to a modern camping tent, and a crinoline fashionable in mid-Victorian days, got firmly wedged in the door way, whereupon some wag suggested that, to expedite departure, a break-down gang and crane should be sent for and the lady hoisted into an ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... rose, laid down the magazine, which was open at the colored picture of a group of ladies in crinoline and chignons, and, going across the room, extended a hand to ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... crossed his path, in the appropriate region of Leicester Square. Some adroit flattery on her side has disposed him to confidence, and he is proving to her, over tea and cigars, that he is not so "inscrutable" after all; or, if he be, that the key to the enigma is a simple one. "This wearer of crinoline seems destined to play Oedipus to the Sphinx he is supposed to be;" or better still, as he gallantly adds, the "Lais" for whose sake he will unveil the mystery unasked. The situation he thus assumes is not dignified; but as ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... splendiferous idees that chile Miss Elsie hab, Vic," she cried, shaking the flounces into place over her enormous crinoline. "Now 'serve she never wore dis sumptious dress more en once, but sent it down here good as new; 'sides de turban, jes see it shine. Yes, Vic, I forgives yer, so don't rub dem knuckles ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... small fortune. Beautiful oil paintings from Italy hang around, and the bishop's throne is a marvel of gold lace and luxury. A queer-looking utensil, like a low seat, but with round brass bosses at each corner, proved to be merely a sort of crinoline whereon the bishop might extend his robes, so as to look inflated and imposing. So does the noble turkey-cock extend himself when bent on conquest of his trustful mate, gobbling the while strange-sounding ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... kindly tone of voice and gentle manner winning the heart of a gentleman to respect her as he would his mother. It was her mission to atone for her husband's sins, and she fulfilled her duty; more could not be asked of her, for his sins were many. The daughter was a copy of the father, in crinoline; taking to affectation—which is vulgarity in its most offensive form—as a duck takes to water. Even her dress was marked, not by that neatness which shows refinement, but by precision, which in dress is vulgar. One glance, and you saw the woman who in another ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... black bonnet, and a black shawl, and no crinoline at all, and a pair of large green spectacles, and a great hooked nose, hooked so much that the bridge of it stood quite up above her eyebrows; and under her arm she carried a great birch-rod. Indeed she was so ugly that Tom was tempted to make faces at her, but did not, for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... performance of a feat at once perilous and daring, one unknown to the members of "our set," and which might have been thought impracticable by all who had known us only in the gas-light glare of Society, and the circumspection of crinoline's confining circle. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... decay. But as the gale swung and swelled the blue and white skirts till they took on the monstrous contours of Victorian crinolines, a sunken memory stirred in her that was almost romance—a memory of a dusty volume of Punch in an aunt's house in infancy: pictures of crinoline hoops and croquet hoops and some pretty story, of which perhaps they were a part. This half-perceptible fragrance in her thoughts faded almost instantly, and Diana Duke entered the house even more promptly than her companion. Tall, slim, ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... EDGE WIRE—All edge wire must be covered with crinoline or a cheap muslin. Cut a strip of such goods on a true bias, three-eighths of an inch wide. Remove the selvage and stretch the strip. Bind the edge wire with it, holding it very tight. Sew close to wire using ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin

... time, and went to 'Avenel,' the pretty home of the Burwells. The comforts of this sweet old place seemed very delicious to me after my short experience of roughing it. Papa was much amused when I appeared in crinoline, my 'hoops' having been squeezed into the saddle-bags and brought with me. We remained here the next day, Sunday, and the day after rode on some twelve miles to Captain Buford's. The Captain, in his shirt-sleeves, received us with open arms, seemed much surprised ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... things of which—to use her own sensitive expression—Miss Wimple had "cleansed" her when she came were out of the question. It was as true of this poor young lady in her trunkless plight, as of any dishevelled Marius in crinoline, who sits down and weeps among the brand-new ruins of a Carthage of satin, lawns, and laces, that she had Nothing to Wear. So Miss Wimple, encouraged by the happy success of the Hoop stratagem, forthwith began to cast about her; and for the present Mr. Osgood's letter and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... among us this antique and austere consistency. I don't talk things over with Lorraine for nothing, and she does keep for me the flashes of perception we neither of us waste on the others. It's the "antiquity of the age of crinoline," she said the other day a propos of a little carte-de-visite photograph of my ancestress as a young woman of the time of the War; looking as if she had been violently inflated from below, but had succeeded in resisting at any cost, and with a strange intensity of expression, from her waist up. ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... is given to the consultant by the crinoline, which appears amidst these signs of ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent

... see how the same wants and tastes find the same implements and modes of expression in all times and places. The young ladies of Otaheite, as you may see in Cook's Voyages, had a sort of crinoline arrangement fully equal in radius to the largest spread of our own lady-baskets. When I fling a Bay-State shawl over my shoulders, I am only taking a lesson from the climate that the Indian had learned before me. A BLANKET-shawl ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... impair the strength of the note-holder's position as against the depositor, because even now there is no essential difference. It would substitute a more businesslike and simple statement for a form of accounts which is cumbrous and stupid and Early Victorian—a relic of an age which produced the crinoline, the Crystal Palace and the Albert Memorial. On the other hand, to alter a statistical record merely for the sake of simplicity and symmetry is questionable. Unless we are getting more and truer information, it is a pity to make comparisons between one year and another difficult ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers

... desirable, method of sewing-on these fastenings is to place the eye at the edge of the seam or facing and the hook sufficiently far back from the opposite side to give a lap. A much preferable method is to baste a bias strip of crinoline along the positions to be occupied by the hooks and eyes; this gives strength to the finish. Sufficient material should be allowed for folding over the shanks after the hooks and eyes have been sewed on, or they may be covered with silk ribbon, slipping the edge under the ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson

... carry a single lucky wight,—at best, but a species of heavenly sulky,—compared with a railroad train that speeds along hundreds of men, women, and children, over land and water, with any amount of heavy baggage, as well as a boundless extent of crinoline? And if this equipage, gift of genii of our age, seem to lack some of the celerity and secrecy which attended the voyagers of the flying carpet, suppose we add the power of whispering to a friend a thousand miles off the inmost thoughts of the heart, the most desperate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... enormous dimple had been made by the impact of the projectile, which lay almost buried in the earth. Two or three trees, broken by its fall, sprawled on the turf. Among this debris was the missile; resembling nothing so much as a huge crinoline. At the moment we reached the spot P.C. A581 was ordering it off; and Henry Pearson, aged 28 (no fixed abode), and Martha Griffin, aged 54, of Maybury Tenements, were circulating among the crowd offering matches for sale. They have nothing to do with this story, but their names ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas

... of partnership, they got a bad scare. Jim and Kullers were below, getting out dirt for all they were worth, and Pinter and Dave at their windlasses, when who should march down from the cemetery gate but Mother Middleton herself. She was a hard woman to look at. She still wore the old-fashioned crinoline and her hair in a greasy net; and on this as on most other sober occasions, she wore the expression of a rough Irish navvy who has just enough drink to make him nasty and is looking out for an excuse for a ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... the most rebellious, in practice the most obedient, of wives, Mrs. Morley here kissed Isaura, resettled her crinoline, and shaking hands with the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... see that it is laid quite flat, and is drawn tightly round the waist before it is pinned in front; that the pin is a strong one, and that it is secured to the stays, so as not to slip up or down, or crease in the folds. Arrange the folds of the dress over the crinoline petticoats; if the dress fastens behind, put a small pin in the slit to prevent it from opening. See that the sleeves fall well over the arms. If it is finished with a jacket, or other upper dress, see that it fits smoothly under the arms; pull out the flounces, and spread out ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... an inch or two with cold water and cook to a mush; pour into a coarse cotton bag or strainer, and, when cool enough, press or squeeze hard to extract all of the juice. Take a piece of fine Swiss muslin or crinoline, wring out of water, spread over colander placed over a crock, and with a cup dip the juice slowly in, allowing plenty of time to run through; repeat this process twice, rinsing the muslin frequently. Allow the strained ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman

... to fall as a mantle from her neck to the ground like a tent. When this arrangement is concluded she is perfectly happy, as none of the precious fumes can escape, all being retained beneath the robe, precisely as if she wore a crinoline with an incense-burner beneath it, which would be a far more simple way of performing the operation. She now begins to perspire freely in the hot-air bath, and the pores of the skin being thus opened and moist, the volatile oil from the smoke of the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... unnoticed. If a woman of 1860, in the dress of her time, were to meet a woman of 1906, in the dress of her time, each would be amazed at the indecency of the dress of the other. No dress ever was more, or more justly, denounced for ugliness, inconvenience, and indecency than the crinoline, but all the women from 1855 to 1865, including some of the sweetest who ever lived, wore it. No inference whatever as to their taste or character would be justified. There never is any rational judgment in the fashion of dress. No criticism can reach it. In a few cases ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... it waited, like Virginia, in breathless suspense for some secret that must come out of the darkness. Sometimes the sidewalks over which they passed were of flag-stones, sometimes they were of gravel or of strewn cinders. Now and then an old stone house, which had once sheltered crinoline and lace ruffles, or had served as a trading station with the Indians before Dinwiddie had become a city, would loom between two small shops where the owners, coatless and covered with sweat, were selling flat ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... or rather they would indulge in the humour of gratifying their masculine prejudices at the mass meeting. They stamped their feet, they hooted, they looked at the still empty stage and demanded to know where were the leaders of the "Crinoline Campaign." They whispered and nudged each other and ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... the Dowager. 'Tear her wig off! Scrub the paint off her face! Flatten her nose on the pavement! Saw off her legs and give her no crinoline! Take her out bathing, I say, and bring her home in a wheelbarrow with fern roots on the ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... stuck to it that it wasn't like a regular present, being got through a grocer, and as she couldn't send him back the tea, being drunk,—but did you hear how she treated EMMA over the crinoline 'at she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various

... and Madame were starting on an afternoon excursion in the great landau, with Mlle. de Peyronnet wedged between the white pantaloons and Mme. Lamartine's skirts (I presume I might at that date have said crinoline), a deputation of ouvriers suddenly appeared. Lady Sligo described them exactly as they are to be seen in Gavarni's wonderful drawings in The Illustrated London News of 1848—strange beings with long beards and rakish caps, sometimes of liberty and sometimes of less pronounced ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... and the dress I shall wear Is TOO lovely; but"— "But what then, ma chere?" Said Brown, as the lady came to a full stop, And glanced round the shelves of the little back shop. "Well, I want—I want something to fill out the skirt To the proper dimensions, without being girt In a stiff crinoline, or caged in a hoop That shows through one's skirt like the bars of a coop; Something light, that a lady may waltz in, or polk, With a freedom that none but you masculine folk Ever know. For, however poor woman aspires, She's always bound down to the earth by these wires. Are you listening? Nonsense! ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... by-the-bye, we appear to be adopting). Accordingly, on looking up, I observed, to my infinite chagrin, that I was the "observed of all observers," and probably was set down as a bete Anglais, who knew no better. The extensive crinoline of the ladies effectually prevented a retreat in any direction, and I was unpleasantly conscious of the suppressed titter the fair ones tried to conceal behind their fans. I endeavoured to summon up all the resources of my London phlegm, to ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... and goes straight to it, without loss of time. Utterly regardless of fashion, for its own sake, she always contrives to be in the mode, though I believe that if hoop skirts were suited to her, she'd have the courage of her crinoline, and ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... gentleman, on the whole, in the United Kingdom, he is not so invariable in fairness towards the fair as could be wished. The follies and frivolities of absurd fashions are his proper game; and he does brave service in hunting them down. Still, his warfare against crinoline, small bonnets, and other feminine fancies in dress, has been tiresomely inveterate. Even Mr. Punch had better, as a general rule, leave the management of the female toilette to those whom it most nearly concerns. But in his case, the scolding or pouting should not be inexorable; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... you suppose? The Spider, dressed for an excursion. 'So she is going too!' thought I, not very well pleased. She had in her arms—what do you suppose? A confounded little lapdog,—the spaniel you saw just now with his nose just above the crinoline. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... certainly, so unwomanly, that prompts this gentle and refined woman to people her gracious solitudes of spirit with those still more gracious lady-like beings which she employs. For her pictures, that is her most typical ones, contain always these groupings of figures in crinoline-like gowns with perhaps more of the touch of eighteen-eighty than of seventy in them, so given to flounces and cascades of lace with picture hats to shade the eyes, and streamers of velvet ribbon to give attenuated ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... sailing craft and the old English stage-coach are, after all, the only modes of conveyance worthy the patronage of Britons. Against exaggerated hoop-skirts he has all along set his face, and seldom, if ever, condescends to delineate a lady in crinoline. His beau-ideal of female beauty is comprised in an hour-glass waist, a skirt that fits close to the form, a sandalled shoe, and very long ringlets; whereas tight lacing, narrow skirts, sandalled shoes, and ringlets have been banished from the English modes any time these fifteen years. Those ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... booted ankles, nor trip themselves up over their trains. It was a difficult task in many respects. Although I laced them in until they grew blue in the face, their waists were a disgrace to the sex; while—crinoline being unknown then—my struggles to give them becoming embonpoint may be imagined. It was not until a year later that Punch thought of using a clothes-basket; and I would have given much for such a hint when I was dresser to the theatrical company of the 1st Royals. The hair was ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... Had crinoline been in vogue in the year 1851, Robert would have found a parallel before his eyes, in these birch-bark flounces arranged over a sustaining framework, in four successive falls, narrowing in circumference ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... Baroness was clad in a voluminous silk dress, pale grey in colour, and adorned with flounces and a crinoline and train. Also, she was short and inordinately stout, while her gross, flabby chin completely concealed her neck. Her face was purple, and the little eyes in it had an impudent, malicious expression. Yet she walked as though she were conferring a favour upon everybody ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... plump, on other occasions wofully thin. "When she goes into the world," said the same chronicler, "ma cousine surrounds herself with jupons—c'est pour defendre sa vertu: when she is in a devotional mood, she gives up rouge, roast meat, and crinoline, and fait maigre absolument." To spite the Duke her husband, she took up with the Vicomte de Florac, and to please herself she cast him away. She took his brother, the Abbe de Florac, for a director, and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... learning the Bible and the commentaries, I very nearly had a real knife, also of my own making. I found a bit of steel belonging to my mother's crinoline, and I set it very cleverly into a piece of wood. I sharpened the steel beautifully on a stone, and naturally cut all ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich

... knows all the statistics of my teeth and gums, my double teeth, my single teeth, my stopped teeth, and my sound. In this Arcadian rest, I am fearless of him as of a harmless, powerless creature in a Scotch cap, who adores a young lady in a voluminous crinoline, at a neighbouring billiard- room, and whose passion would be uninfluenced if every one of her teeth were false. They may be. He takes ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... met her in the street, she used at first to droop her head and blush, until her will lifted her chin like a bearing-rein and she forced herself to a proud blank stare, while her small stature worked to make her crinoline an indignant spreading majesty behind her. Yet, after all, she was not the only person to be inconvenienced, for he had fashed himself a great deal over the business and had slept very badly for a time. He exhorted her ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... affluence of five. Our youngest was beside him, a small sister, then not quite in her eighth year, and arrayed apparently after the fashion of the period and place; and the tradition lingered long of his having suddenly laid his hand on her little flounced person and exclaimed with ludicrous horror: "Crinoline?—I was suspecting it! So young and ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... costume, and the rumbling of the machine was accounted for by one glance at the elaborately quilted petticoat. She had folded a blanket between the double sheet, so as to give the effect of wadding, and an ancient crinoline held out the folds with old-world effect. For the rest she wore the orthodox panniers on the hips, and a bodice swathed as artistically as might be, round the beautiful bare neck and arms. Her hair ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... her lady-in-waiting, hurried into her toilet-chamber in advance of her lady-in-waiting, who followed, sighing and shaking her head, and endeavored with her own hands to loosen the stiff corset of her robe, and to free herself from the immense crinoline ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... at the time. I think there must be some subtle connection between clothes and thought. I cannot imagine men in those trousers and Dundreary whiskers talking as you fellows are talking now, any more than I could conceive of a woman in a crinoline and a poke bonnet smoking a cigarette. I think it must be so, because dear mother used to be the most easy-going woman in the world in her ordinary clothes, and would let papa smoke all over the house. But about once every three weeks she would put on a hideous old-fashioned black ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... Carleton's impressions of the Japanese were that they had a more manly physique, and were less mildly tempered, but that they were lower in morals, than the Chinese. The women were especially eager to know the mysteries of crinoline, and anxiously inspected the ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... barn in days when his father was away. He feared both his father and his mother, and so was in an even more embarrassing situation than old Hiram himself. He had worked gradually up to tobacco by smoking cigarettes of cane made from abandoned hoop-skirts. Crinoline was fashionable, even in the country, in those days, and ribs of cane were used before the metallic distenders of dresses came in. One hoop-skirt, whose usefulness as an article of adornment was ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... must be very difficult to acquire from sheer imagination. Also her dress was far from what it ought to have been. I am sure no French dressmaker had the making of that gown. In the first act Marie Antoinette, in the apotheose of her glory, wore voluminous skirts and crinoline, according to the famous picture. Madame Ristori wore a crinoline, to be sure; but her dress was too short in front and showed her low-heeled shoes of white satin, and when she moved about her gown of heavy brocade swayed from side to side like ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... truth very great. I used to hear that her lover was fond of comparing her to the Venus of Milo; and, indeed, if you can imagine the mutilated goddess with her full complement of limbs, dressed out by Madame de Crinoline, and engaged in small talk beneath the drawing-room chandelier, you may obtain a vague notion of Miss Josephine Leary. Locksley, you remember, was rather a short man, dark, and not particularly good-looking; and when he walked about with his betrothed, it was half a matter of surprise ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... his tackety buit on the boddom o' the butter kit, an' in it gaed, an' him wi't, an' there he was, clappin' his hands, an' stanin' juist like's he'd on a wid crinoline. You never heard sic a roostin' an' roarin' an' hear-hearin' an' hurrain'! I had to shut my een for fear o' bein' knokit deaf a'thegither. Stumpie Mertin jumpit up as spruce as gin he had baith his legs, instead o' only ane, an' forgettin' ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond

... thought was: what a picture! Mary wore a pale pink cotton gown which, over the light swellings of her crinoline, bulged and billowed round her, and generously swept the ground. Collar and cuffs of spotless lawn outlined neck and wrists. She bent low over her stitching, and the straight white parting of her hair intensified the ebony of the glossy bands. Her broad pure forehead had ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... up, past the three tall elms. She was a big girl, wearing black silk aprons and learning French. Walking by herself. When she arched her back and stuck her stomach out she felt like a tall lady in a crinoline and shawl. She swung her hips and made her skirts fly out. That was her grown-up ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair

... national propensity for travelling. Wandering restlessly about, she never remains two days on the same spot. Yesterday, she climbed the cliff, and sat looking off upon the water nearly all day long. To-day, she has come down to the sand, where, with base distended, as if in caricature of crinoline, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... skirt of 1913-14. The extraordinary ingenuity of this move was, not only that it thwarted any good intention of not buying a new dress this year, it being manifestly impossible to "alter" a tight skirt into a crinoline, but also that the extra cloth required for the unusually full skirts more than compensated the trade for the continued abstention of a few unfashionable obstinates, as well as for the ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato



Words linked to "Crinoline" :   skirt, textile, half-slip, material, hoop, fabric, cloth



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