dressing gown

plural dressing gowns · alternative dressing-gown

1. IrelandUKAn item of clothing often made from cotton or another absorbent material, in the form of a long open robe with a belt to tie it around the middle and fasten it securely; often worn over pyjamas.

   After about ten minutes he got up, and, throwing on an elaborate dressing-gown of silk-embroidered cashmere wool, passed into the onyx-paved bathroom.

   1891, Oscar Wilde, chapter VIII, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC, page 138

   1 more example

   I was feeling just as I had felt in the old Malvern House epoch when I used to sneak down to [the headmaster]'s study at dead of night in quest of the biscuits he kept there in a tin on his desk, and there came back to me the memory of the occasion when, not letting a twig snap beneath my feet, I had entered his sanctum in pyjamas and a dressing-gown, to find him seated in his chair, tucking into the biscuits himself. [...] She was looking more like Sherlock Holmes than ever. Slap a dressing-gown on her and give her a violin, and she could have walked straight into Baker Street and no questions asked.

   1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, “VII AND XX”, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC

   Synonyms: bathrobe, robe de chambre