Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A coarse cotton fabric heavily sized with glue, used for stiffening garments and in bookbinding.
- n. Archaic Rigid formality.
- adj. Resembling or suggesting buckram, as in stiffness or formality: "a wondrous buckram style” ( Thomas Carlyle).
- v. To stiffen with or as if with buckram.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Formerly, a fine and costly material used for church banners and vestments and for personal wear; also, a cheaper material used for linings.
- n. In recent times, coarse linen cloth stiffened with glue or gum, used as a stiffening for keeping garments in a required shape, and recently also in binding books.
- n. 3. A buckram bag used by lawyers' clerks.
- n. The ramson or bear's-garlic, Allium ursinum.
- n. In the old herbals, the cuckoo-pint, Arum maculatum.
- Made of or resembling buckram of either kind; hence, stiff; precise; formal.
- To strengthen with buckram, or in the manner of buckram; make stiff.
Wiktionary
- n. A coarse cloth of linen or hemp, stiffened with size or glue, used in garments to keep them in the form intended, and for wrappers to cover merchandise.
- v. transitive To stiffen with or as if with buckram.
- n. botany A plant, Allium ursinum, also called ramson, wild garlic, or bear garlic.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A coarse cloth of linen or hemp, stiffened with size or glue, used in garments to keep them in the form intended, and for wrappers to cover merchandise.
- n. (Bot.) A plant. See Ramson.
- adj. Made of buckram.
- adj. Stiff; precise.
- v. To strengthen with buckram; to make stiff.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. rigidly formal
- n. a coarse cotton fabric stiffened with glue; used in bookbinding and to stiffen clothing
- v. stiffen with or as with buckram
Etymologies
- Perhaps from ealier buckrams, from buck + ramps, ramsh (“wild garlic, ramson”). Compare Danish ramsløg ("ramson"), Swedish ramslök ("bear garlic, ramson"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English bukeram, fine linen, from Old French boquerant and from Old Italian bucherame, both after Bukhara (Bukhoro), from which fine linen was once imported. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Linen cloth observed through a microscope which magnifies the threads to a coarseness of about forty to the inch gives us the exact appearance of the buckram, which is a heavy, strong cloth well adapted to large books, and which furnishes the most durable binding of all the book cloths.”
“The structures it is true tend a little too much of what may be termed buckram and fustian styles; indeed there is scarcely a form or a detail which an architect would care to jot down in his note-book.”
“The coarse, heavy, plain-woven linen or cotton material known as buckram today is used for stiffening, etc.”
“The vessels of the Mangalore merchants came here to trade with the natives of this part of India for cargoes of spices, a fine kind of cloth called buckram and other valuable wares; but their vessels were frequently attacked, and too often pillaged by the pirates who infested these seas, and who were justly regarded as formidable enemies.”
Celebrated Travels and Travellers Part I. The Exploration of the World
“The sequence's metaphors frequently round on poetry or writing generally like this: a poem is itself a scrynne for word-relics, one can "buckram" "stanzas with such long lines," and yes, "deception is part of the game" in the Aristotelian sense of metaphor as misnaming.”
“_Foundation muslin_: A nice kind of buckram, stiff and white, used for the foundation or basis of bonnets, etc.”
“_Foundation muslin_, a nice kind of buckram, stiff and white, used for the foundation or basis of bonnets, &c.”
A Treatise on Domestic Economy For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School
“_ The word "buckram" was anciently applied to the finest linen cloth, as is apparently the case here; see”
“Covered in red buckram, with gilt lettering on the spine and front face.”
“It is Near Fine+ in dark red polished buckram boards, gilt cockerel stamped at front cover, gilt lettering and small cockerel at spine, deckle edges all around, rag paper content with watermark of cockerel over letters "G" "C" and "P" (Golden Cockerel Press) on last (of 2) blank page.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘buckram’.
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Even More 250 Spelling Words
Good for intermediate and advanced spellers and anybody who wants to use words with precision
maculature, mochila, twankay, hyson, isocryme, glasnost, ozaena, locavore, frazil, sclaff, chautauqua, bergamot and 238 more...
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phrontistery - b
List of words from phrontistery.info
babeldom, baccate, bacchanal, bacciferous, bacciform, baccivorous, bacillicide, backstay, bactericide, baculiform, baculine, baculum and 582 more...
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The Bindery
A list of bookbinding terms and phrases, for assembling new or repairing/reassembling old books.
perfect binding, animal glue, spine, textblock, polyvinyl acetate, double-fan adhesi..., board, backing, rounding, bone, book cloth, pasteboard and 270 more...
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Tristram Shandy
souse, meet, sententious, propound, boot, casuistry, avoirdupois, akimbo, disport, lenity, succussation, sweetbread and 197 more...
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Bucky Fuller's projectiles
R Buckminster Fuller created and coined so many terms and ideas that it certainly warrants a list here.
As RBF said "Dare to be naive."
Bucky would probably say "buck the ...wrapability, indigs, geodesic, compound curvature, omnidirectuional ..., synergetics, tetrahelix, SSRCD numbers, wiz of wiz-dom, cosmic illions, omnitopolgy, tensegrity and 36 more...
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Tip-Top Toponymic
Place names that have entered general speech. Toponyms that interest me in other ways are on Place Names Of Distinction
hamburger, wiener, finlandisation, vernissage, hackney, venetians, bohemian, anti-macassar, berliner, cravat, calico, serendipity and 113 more...
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Forgotten English 1
jacal, mastaba, lucarne, quoin, triglyph, gargarice, nimgimmer, phrenologize, fleam, eaglestone, toad eater, king's evil and 156 more...
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Rare Books
Words used in the rare book trade (of which I was once a part). For more about how such books are put together, see hernesheir's excellent The Bindery.
foxing, gilt, headband, bumped, endpaper, leaf, colophon, vellum, laid paper, boards, device, engraving and 168 more...
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Compounds That Look Freakish
You know who you are, freakish compounds. Though very useful, some of these words just don't seem right together--or, their meanings are so far from what the two (or more) component words suggest t...
nightjar, bullfinch, grassquit, bananaquit, ovenbird, waxwing, stonechat, wheatear, bushtit, wrentit, starthroat, godwit and 158 more...
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Gaw
Words for things both tangible and anthropic. I'm in the process of spinning off hardware into ute, and people into oofy.
cum-twang, naumachia, yngling, juggernaught, bliss ninny, iliac crest, moistened bint, slumlord, spondoolies, classy lady, charnel house, electrodoméstico and 334 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, B
bloviate, bejesus, brouhaha, behoove, bodacious, bamboozle, banshee, bub, bolus, blob, bubbly, bleb and 414 more...
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Gil Blas
Interesting words and usages from Smollett's 1749 translation of Lesage's L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane
reck, durance, rhodomontade, hangdog, trap, lustre, pin, boggle, dandle, birthday suit, colic, gripes and 238 more...
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Interesting Scrabble words
Interesting words worth @ least 15 points.
smoochy, zareba, hyphal, djellaba, cloque, pyxidium, qindarka, squiffy, howbeit, chthonic, quinta, azimuthal and 264 more...
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19 c.
some of the interesting words i've had to look up while reading 19th century lit
maugre, connate, alembic, azote, vaticination, valetudinarian, dight, scutcheon, lammergeyer, chamois, asseverate, prebendary and 199 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
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Fabrics
Woven, knit and tatted fabrics. Other kinds of cloth, such as tapa and chamois are not included.
shikii, shantung, cotton, linen, tweed, wool, velour, velvet, velveteen, gabardine, chenille, silk and 550 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for buckram.
jaime_d From Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution Mar 6, 2011
yarb Citation (as adjective) on hodge-podge. Oct 7, 2008
chained_bear men in buckram: sometimes proverbially for non-existent persons, in allusion to Falstaff's ‘four rogues in buckram’ (quot. 1596). Feb 5, 2007