wimple

plural wimples

1. A cloth which usually covers the head and is worn around the neck and chin. It was worn by women in medieval Europe and is still worn by nuns in certain orders.

   [T]he people all wore hosen and shoon and smocks and jupes and jerkins and wimples.

   1936, Norman Lindsay, The Flyaway Highway, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 55

   2 more examples

   There are two tombs, each bearing effigies of a knight and his lady. One is 14th century, the other 15th century. The earlier knight wears chain mail and his lady has long, flowing hair. The later knight has plate armour, and his wife wears a wimple.

   1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 54

   Even the unprecedented detail of the Urbanist regulations is still not sufficient to enable us to envisage with accuracy the appearance of the wimple or the other items that went to make up the habit.

   1999, Cordelia Warr, “Religious dress in Italy in the late Middle Ages”, in Amy De La Haye, editor, Defining Dress: Dress as Object, Meaning, and Identity, Manchester University Press, →ISBN, page 82

2. A fold or pleat in cloth.
3. A ripple, as on the surface of water.
4. A curve or bend.
5. A flag or streamer.

present singular third person wimples · participle present wimpling · participle past wimpled · past wimpled

1. To cover with a wimple.

   this wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy

   c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]

2. To draw down; to lower, like a veil.

   1 more example

   IV A lovely Ladie[*] rode him faire beside, Upon a lowly Asse more white then snow, Yet she much whiter, but the same did hide 30 Under a vele, that wimpled was full low, And over all a blacke stole she did throw, As one that inly mournd: so was she sad, And heavie sat upon her palfrey slow; Seemed in heart some hidden care she had, 35 And by her in a line a milke white lambe she lad.

   1590, Edmund Spenser, Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I, published 1921

3. To cause to appear as if laid in folds or plaits; to cause to ripple or undulate.

   The wind wimples the surface of water.

   1 more example

   [T]hoſe fair Straths that vvater’d are / VVith Tay and Tvveed’s ſmooth Streams, / VVhich gentily and daintily / Eat dovvn the flovvry Braes; / As greatly and quietly / They vvimple to the Seas.

   1720, Allan Ramsay, “The Poet’s Wish: An Ode”, in Poems, Edinburgh: Printed for the author […] [and sold by T. Jauncy […]], →OCLC, page 359

4. To flutter.

   Stars wavered and wimpled in the black waters of the Hudson as a launch put out in silence from the foot of Twenty-seventh Street.

   1920, George Allan England, The Flying Legion

   1 more example

   She wimpled about in the pale moonbeam, Like a feather that floats on a wind tossed-stream; And momently athwart her track The quarl upreared his island back, And the fluttering scallop behind would float, And patter the water about the boat; But he bailed her out with his colen-bell, And he kept her trimmed with a wary tread, While on every side like lightening fell

   1836, Joseph Rodman Drake, The Culprit Fay

plural Wimples · alternative Wimble

1. A surname.