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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
"One could see, by the way in which her girdle rose above her hips, that she had not been long in Paris.--Add to this a plaited tucker, knots of ribbon on her shoes--and that the stripes of her petticoat ran horizontally instead of vertically, and a thousand other enormities which shocked good taste."
I'm not sure what "tucker" means here. Obviously a garment covering chest to waist only, perhaps with only front part ornamental?
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
as soon as i read tucker, i thought bib and tucker-- and thought it might be some sort of napkin, since tucker is food- well, not commonly use for food, but i heard it used, (but i can't say i've used it myself to mean food!)but like many a thought, i was only sort of right... in any case: from Quinion: From Faith Gildenhuys: “What’s the history of best bib and tucker?” A tucker was a bit of lace worn around the neck and top of the bodice by 17th-18th century women, presumably something that was tucked in; the bib was closely related to our modern term—a shirt-front or covering for the breast. The expression is first recorded from the middle of the eighteenth century, initially only for women and girls, as you might expect, but later on also to men, when the words had become a fixed phrase and disengaged from their real meanings. Before then, the common expression seems to have been best bib and band (band meaning collar), also commonly used for men as well as women, which continued after the new term had come into use, though it seems to have died out at the end of the eighteenth century. The word derives from the same source as the tucker of food, but is unconnected in meaning. http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bes1.htm
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