"nightcloth" meaning in English

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "night",
        "3": "cloth"
      },
      "expansion": "night + cloth",
      "name": "compound"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From night + cloth.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "nightcloths",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "nightcloth (plural nightcloths)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "nightclothes"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "96 4",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1976, Jack Foxx [pseudonym; Bill Pronzini], Freebooty: A Novel of Suspense, Indianapolis, Ind., New York, N.Y.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., pages 69–70",
          "text": "When the O’Haras were ten paces away, the bird suddenly swooped off the miner’s shoulder—the miner took no notice—and flew to a table on top of which reposed an elegant metal cage with a frilly nightcloth rolled up at the top. […] The fat woman rolled the nightcloth down over the cage and its nearly raped cockatoo and stalked off with it in high outrage.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1993, Carol Anne O’Marie, Murder Makes a Pilgrimage, Delacorte Press, page 201",
          "text": "Quiet settled over the manager’s office like the night[-]cloth over Sister Angela’s canary cage, leaving each one to brood on his or her own thoughts.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997, Anne K. Rose, “The Waltz”, in Double Vision: Twelve Stories, Madison, Conn.: Psychosocial Press, page 63",
          "text": "Though it is midday the apartment is dark, the nightcloth is on the birdcage still.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997, Epoch, volume 48, page 174",
          "text": "She tells me about the serving girl she had to scold for failing to remove the nightcloth from the songbirds’ cage (You see, I can be useful to you when you’re gone, she exclaims with a teasing smile and plucks a fishbone from my beard) and I provide her a fictitious account of my luncheon visit to a neighboring castellan to discuss proposed changes in the game laws.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2001, Ethan Coen, “My Dream and What I Make of It”, in The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way, New York, N.Y.: Crown Publishers, page 34",
          "text": "In my dream last night I was a toucan / With a nose that was hard as a shell, / So I rapped knuckles on it, / Cracked walnuts upon it, / And cashews and filberts as well. / Yes, I cracked open walnuts upon it, / And used it to bang at my bell. / Yes, I ate walnut meat / While my two toucan feet / Took turns standing. The nightcloth then fell.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A cloth placed over a birdcage, used to simulate the darkness of night and settle the bird(s) into sleep."
      ],
      "id": "en-nightcloth-en-noun-HGwRSwdS",
      "links": [
        [
          "cloth",
          "cloth"
        ],
        [
          "birdcage",
          "birdcage"
        ],
        [
          "simulate",
          "simulate"
        ],
        [
          "darkness",
          "darkness"
        ],
        [
          "night",
          "night"
        ],
        [
          "settle",
          "settle"
        ],
        [
          "bird",
          "bird"
        ],
        [
          "sleep",
          "sleep"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1890, The Manuscripts of S. H. Le Fleming, Esq., of Rydal Hall (Historical Manuscripts Commission. Twelfth Report, Appendix, Part VII.), London: […] [F]or Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, by Eyre and Spottiswoode, […], page 138",
          "text": "(1895.) July 1, 1677.—Lady Mary Fletcher to her niece, Katherine Fleming. Pray tell your father that I omitted two suits of ribbon, a laced apron, and laced nightcloth, and a fan, all of which are necessaries as well as the smocks of which I said nothing.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1978, Carl Allenbaugh, Coins: Questions and Answers, 3rd edition, Iola, Wis.: Krause Publications, page 42",
          "text": "The public was particularly unappreciative of the 1808-1814 Classic Head type which presented “a sleepy-looking Liberty turbaned with a diaphanous nightcloth,” and promptly dubbed her the “Blowsy Barmaid.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1989, Rolland E. Wolfe, “The Accurate Easter Reporters”, in How the Easter Story Grew from Gospel to Gospel, Lewiston, N.Y., Queenston, Ont.: The Edwin Mellen Press, page 13",
          "text": "Witout taking time to dress, and with only a nightcloth around himself, this young lad appears to have rushed out of the city and across the Kidron Valley to the garden. […] When the arresting party grabbed this youth, he slipped out of the nightcloth and fled naked to his home within the walled city of Jerusalem.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1992, Jim Crace, Arcadia, New York, N.Y.: Atheneum, pages 114 and 128",
          "text": "She dressed him in a pair of knee-length trousers and a jacket, no underclothes, no shoes, and put on her own coat and hat above her nightcloth. […] His fingers—adept in crowds at unloosening, unfastening, unbuttoning—were trembling at the strings of the nightcloth which she still wore beneath her coat. […] One hand pulled her heavy coat and nightcloth to her waist; his other hand was pushed too tightly—and was trapped—beneath his trouser band, beneath his underclothes.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A nightgown."
      ],
      "id": "en-nightcloth-en-noun-~~DpOr6G",
      "links": [
        [
          "nightgown",
          "nightgown"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(rare) A nightgown."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "rare"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "nightcloth"
}

{
  "categories": [
    "English compound terms",
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English nouns"
  ],
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "night",
        "3": "cloth"
      },
      "expansion": "night + cloth",
      "name": "compound"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From night + cloth.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "nightcloths",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "nightcloth (plural nightcloths)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "nightclothes"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1976, Jack Foxx [pseudonym; Bill Pronzini], Freebooty: A Novel of Suspense, Indianapolis, Ind., New York, N.Y.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., pages 69–70",
          "text": "When the O’Haras were ten paces away, the bird suddenly swooped off the miner’s shoulder—the miner took no notice—and flew to a table on top of which reposed an elegant metal cage with a frilly nightcloth rolled up at the top. […] The fat woman rolled the nightcloth down over the cage and its nearly raped cockatoo and stalked off with it in high outrage.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1993, Carol Anne O’Marie, Murder Makes a Pilgrimage, Delacorte Press, page 201",
          "text": "Quiet settled over the manager’s office like the night[-]cloth over Sister Angela’s canary cage, leaving each one to brood on his or her own thoughts.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997, Anne K. Rose, “The Waltz”, in Double Vision: Twelve Stories, Madison, Conn.: Psychosocial Press, page 63",
          "text": "Though it is midday the apartment is dark, the nightcloth is on the birdcage still.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997, Epoch, volume 48, page 174",
          "text": "She tells me about the serving girl she had to scold for failing to remove the nightcloth from the songbirds’ cage (You see, I can be useful to you when you’re gone, she exclaims with a teasing smile and plucks a fishbone from my beard) and I provide her a fictitious account of my luncheon visit to a neighboring castellan to discuss proposed changes in the game laws.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2001, Ethan Coen, “My Dream and What I Make of It”, in The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way, New York, N.Y.: Crown Publishers, page 34",
          "text": "In my dream last night I was a toucan / With a nose that was hard as a shell, / So I rapped knuckles on it, / Cracked walnuts upon it, / And cashews and filberts as well. / Yes, I cracked open walnuts upon it, / And used it to bang at my bell. / Yes, I ate walnut meat / While my two toucan feet / Took turns standing. The nightcloth then fell.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A cloth placed over a birdcage, used to simulate the darkness of night and settle the bird(s) into sleep."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "cloth",
          "cloth"
        ],
        [
          "birdcage",
          "birdcage"
        ],
        [
          "simulate",
          "simulate"
        ],
        [
          "darkness",
          "darkness"
        ],
        [
          "night",
          "night"
        ],
        [
          "settle",
          "settle"
        ],
        [
          "bird",
          "bird"
        ],
        [
          "sleep",
          "sleep"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with rare senses"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1890, The Manuscripts of S. H. Le Fleming, Esq., of Rydal Hall (Historical Manuscripts Commission. Twelfth Report, Appendix, Part VII.), London: […] [F]or Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, by Eyre and Spottiswoode, […], page 138",
          "text": "(1895.) July 1, 1677.—Lady Mary Fletcher to her niece, Katherine Fleming. Pray tell your father that I omitted two suits of ribbon, a laced apron, and laced nightcloth, and a fan, all of which are necessaries as well as the smocks of which I said nothing.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1978, Carl Allenbaugh, Coins: Questions and Answers, 3rd edition, Iola, Wis.: Krause Publications, page 42",
          "text": "The public was particularly unappreciative of the 1808-1814 Classic Head type which presented “a sleepy-looking Liberty turbaned with a diaphanous nightcloth,” and promptly dubbed her the “Blowsy Barmaid.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1989, Rolland E. Wolfe, “The Accurate Easter Reporters”, in How the Easter Story Grew from Gospel to Gospel, Lewiston, N.Y., Queenston, Ont.: The Edwin Mellen Press, page 13",
          "text": "Witout taking time to dress, and with only a nightcloth around himself, this young lad appears to have rushed out of the city and across the Kidron Valley to the garden. […] When the arresting party grabbed this youth, he slipped out of the nightcloth and fled naked to his home within the walled city of Jerusalem.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1992, Jim Crace, Arcadia, New York, N.Y.: Atheneum, pages 114 and 128",
          "text": "She dressed him in a pair of knee-length trousers and a jacket, no underclothes, no shoes, and put on her own coat and hat above her nightcloth. […] His fingers—adept in crowds at unloosening, unfastening, unbuttoning—were trembling at the strings of the nightcloth which she still wore beneath her coat. […] One hand pulled her heavy coat and nightcloth to her waist; his other hand was pushed too tightly—and was trapped—beneath his trouser band, beneath his underclothes.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A nightgown."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "nightgown",
          "nightgown"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(rare) A nightgown."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "rare"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "nightcloth"
}