Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A soft thin cloth woven from Chinese or Indian raw silk or an imitation thereof.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A soft, unbleached washing silk resembling the tasar silk of India, woven in China, chiefly in the province of Shantung, from cocoons of a wild silkworm (Attacus pernyi) which feeds on a scrub-oak. The finer kinds bleached, dyed or figured after importation, are known in the trade as China silks.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A fabric of undyed silk from India and China.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a soft thin cloth woven from raw silk (or an imitation)
Etymologies
- Chinese (Mandarin) běn zhī, homemade fabric : běn, root, original, one's own + zhī, to weave, spin.
Examples
“They seem always to be papered with buff-and-mustard papers and to have "pongee" sofa-cushions with frills.”
“Miss Drexel, seized by inspiration or desperation, with a quick movement stripped off her short, corduroy tramping-skirt, and, looking very lithe and boyish in slender-cut pongee bloomers, ran along the sand and dropped the skirt for a foothold for the slowly revolving wheels.”
“At one point Miss Drexel "seized by inspiration or desperation, with a quick movement stripped off her short, corduroy tramping-skirt, and, looking very lithe and boyish in slender-cut pongee bloomers," throws the skirt under the wheels to give the machine's wheels purchase.”
“Fontana of Italy, in a feat never before attempted in pongee, novelty cottons, shantung, or faille, is performing the incredibly difficult REVERSE BOLERO with this pattern.”
Fontana Attempts the Difficult and Dangerous Reverse Bolero! - A Dress A Day
“Wild silk fabrics—such as pongee or shantung—are both durable and less expensive than pure dye silks.”
“The willow, almond and the whole lot of trees, on the upper side, were, it is true, without blossom and leaves; but pongee and damask silks, paper and lustring had been employed, together with rice-paper, to make flowers of, which had been affixed on the branches.”
“A man in a soft pongee suit, with cap to match, hailed him.”
“These are two pieces of pongee, which will do for wadded coats and jupes as well.”
“The doctor was a thick-set man, dressed in pongee silk coat and trousers of the same material, closely fitting his muscular thighs.”
“So I wore a simple kimono of black Oshima pongee patterned with red roses and a red and white obi patterned with embroidered maple leaves done in black.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pongee’.
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Silk
filator, quadrivoltine, trivoltin, trivoltine, trigoneutic, grasserie, grege, samia cynthia, Bombyx, bombycid, silkworm, silk moth and 84 more...
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texture
suberous, sabulous, indurate, achondrite, wale, corneouss, knit, barathea, trachyte, cancellous, globuliferous, pongee and 29 more...
knitandpurl "Mrs. Oliphant was very glad to see them. She wore a suit made out of pongee, a hat with a green veil, an amethyst necklace, a lapis lazuli necklace, and a silver one with her eyeglasses on it."
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, pp 165-166 of the 2008 paperback edition Jul 2, 2011