damask

What it means

1. countableuncountableAn ornate silk fabric originating from Damascus.

   True damasks are pure silk.

   3 more examples

   […]but what struck Tom's fancy most was a strange, grim-looking, high backed chair, carved in the most fantastic manner, with a flowered damask cushion, and the round knobs at the bottom of the legs carefully tied up in red cloth, as if it had got the gout in its toes.

   1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, “(please specify the chapter name)”, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC

   Its curtains were of damask, with leafy wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and silver ground, and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, and it stood in a room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut black velvet upon cloth of silver.

   1891, Oscar Wilde, chapter XI, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC, page 206

   Referring to the genealogy of the Dobie family, we find that it can be traced back to the sixteenth century, when the Dobies of Dobie's Lane were prominent shipbuilders in the seaport town of Leith, Scotland. Dr. Dobie [William Gowan Dobie, D.M.] was born in the ancient Scotch city of Dunfermline, where his father, William, and grandfather were both damask manufacturers, while his mother, Agnes, was a daughter of James Mathewson, who was one of the pioneer manufacturers of damask.

   1902, James Miller Guinn, Historical and Biographical Record of Southern California: Containing a History of Southern California from Its Earliest Settlement to the Opening Year of the Twentieth Century; Also Containing Biographies of Well-known Citizens of the Past and Present, Chapman Publishing Company, page 471

2. countableuncountableLinen so woven that a pattern is produced by the different directions of the thread, without contrast of colour.
3. countableuncountableA heavy woolen or worsted stuff with a pattern woven in the same way as the linen damask; made for furniture covering and hangings.

   1 more example

   Thus the red damask curtains which now shut out the fog-laden, drizzling atmosphere of the Marylebone Road, had cost a mere song, and yet they might have been warranted to last another thirty years. A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat forward, staring into the dull, small fire.

   1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC, page 0016

In a sentence

True damasks are pure silk.

Where it comes from

1. Medieval Latindamascus
2. Middle Englishdamaske
3. Englishdamask

From Middle English damaske, from Medieval Latin damascus, named after the city Damascus, where the fabric was originally made.