"drawboy" meaning in All languages combined

See drawboy on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: drawboys [plural], draw-boy [alternative]
Etymology: From draw + boy. Etymology templates: {{compound|en|draw|boy}} draw + boy Head templates: {{en-noun}} drawboy (plural drawboys)
  1. (weaving, historical) A boy who operates the harness cords of a drawloom. Tags: historical
    Sense id: en-drawboy-en-noun-RzoZmIWJ Categories (other): Weaving Topics: business, manufacturing, textiles, weaving
  2. Part of a power loom that performs the same function.
    Sense id: en-drawboy-en-noun-7VaofmBX Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 23 77 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 23 77 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 22 78
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Related terms: drawstring, child labour

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "draw",
        "3": "boy"
      },
      "expansion": "draw + boy",
      "name": "compound"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From draw + boy.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "drawboys",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "draw-boy",
      "tags": [
        "alternative"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "drawboy (plural drawboys)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "drawstring"
    },
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "child labour"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Weaving",
          "orig": "en:Weaving",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              1025,
              1033
            ],
            [
              1430,
              1438
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1978, James Burke, Connections, Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, pages 108-109:",
          "text": "At some time in the fifteenth century a silk-worker called John of Calabria, an Italian immigrant, had introduced a new kind of silk-weaving loom, which made the process somewhat easier. The basic difference between weaving wool (or linen) and silk lies in the fineness of the latter's threads. Because there are so many of them to the square inch, and the material itself was already expensive, silk was costly. By the time the automated organ was in use, John's drawloom, as it was called, was already working in Lyons, with a few modifications. First a pattern was drawn on squared paper, to correspond to the pattern desired on the finished weave. Squared paper was used to show which of the warp threads had to be lifted each time the weft thread was passed between them. In this way, all the warp threads to be lifted at the same time could be attached to a common cord. When the cord was pulled, all the threads attached to it would lift in unison. The job of pulling these cords was left to children, commonly called drawboys, who worked long hours and often became tired enough to pull the wrong cords, with disastrous results. The weaver would only know of the mistake well after it had been made, when it was too late to correct it. […] [figure legend] A 'bizarre' pattern in silk. At the beginning of the eighteenth century these complex designs, inspired by silks from the Far East, required immense care in weaving. Drawboys' mistakes were ruinously expensive.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A boy who operates the harness cords of a drawloom."
      ],
      "id": "en-drawboy-en-noun-RzoZmIWJ",
      "links": [
        [
          "weaving",
          "weaving#Noun"
        ],
        [
          "boy",
          "boy"
        ],
        [
          "cord",
          "cord"
        ],
        [
          "drawloom",
          "drawloom"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(weaving, historical) A boy who operates the harness cords of a drawloom."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "historical"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "business",
        "manufacturing",
        "textiles",
        "weaving"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "23 77",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "23 77",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "22 78",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Part of a power loom that performs the same function."
      ],
      "id": "en-drawboy-en-noun-7VaofmBX",
      "links": [
        [
          "power loom",
          "power loom"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "drawboy"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English compound terms",
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English nouns",
    "Pages with 1 entry",
    "Pages with entries"
  ],
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "draw",
        "3": "boy"
      },
      "expansion": "draw + boy",
      "name": "compound"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From draw + boy.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "drawboys",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "draw-boy",
      "tags": [
        "alternative"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "drawboy (plural drawboys)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "drawstring"
    },
    {
      "word": "child labour"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with historical senses",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "en:Weaving"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              1025,
              1033
            ],
            [
              1430,
              1438
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1978, James Burke, Connections, Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, pages 108-109:",
          "text": "At some time in the fifteenth century a silk-worker called John of Calabria, an Italian immigrant, had introduced a new kind of silk-weaving loom, which made the process somewhat easier. The basic difference between weaving wool (or linen) and silk lies in the fineness of the latter's threads. Because there are so many of them to the square inch, and the material itself was already expensive, silk was costly. By the time the automated organ was in use, John's drawloom, as it was called, was already working in Lyons, with a few modifications. First a pattern was drawn on squared paper, to correspond to the pattern desired on the finished weave. Squared paper was used to show which of the warp threads had to be lifted each time the weft thread was passed between them. In this way, all the warp threads to be lifted at the same time could be attached to a common cord. When the cord was pulled, all the threads attached to it would lift in unison. The job of pulling these cords was left to children, commonly called drawboys, who worked long hours and often became tired enough to pull the wrong cords, with disastrous results. The weaver would only know of the mistake well after it had been made, when it was too late to correct it. […] [figure legend] A 'bizarre' pattern in silk. At the beginning of the eighteenth century these complex designs, inspired by silks from the Far East, required immense care in weaving. Drawboys' mistakes were ruinously expensive.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A boy who operates the harness cords of a drawloom."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "weaving",
          "weaving#Noun"
        ],
        [
          "boy",
          "boy"
        ],
        [
          "cord",
          "cord"
        ],
        [
          "drawloom",
          "drawloom"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(weaving, historical) A boy who operates the harness cords of a drawloom."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "historical"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "business",
        "manufacturing",
        "textiles",
        "weaving"
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "Part of a power loom that performs the same function."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "power loom",
          "power loom"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "drawboy"
}

Download raw JSONL data for drawboy meaning in All languages combined (2.9kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-02-08 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-02-01 using wiktextract (f492ef9 and 9905b1f). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.