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. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
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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Additional 250 Spelling Words
Words for the diehard intermediate and advanced spellers
facetiae, sagittary, anthophilous, hydromancy, pandect, carillonneur, tabbouleh, litterateur, windgall, pinguid, tressure, moderne and 238 more...
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phrontistery - p
from phrontistery.info
pustule, purulence, pushful, purser, purpureal, putative, purpure, purpresture, purloin, purline, purlieu, purlicue and 1766 more...
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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 108 more...
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so thin!
cotton, filmsy, tenuousic, rarenessly, gruelic, fila(orless)ment, gauzy, slimsy, amnionically, crepeilly, sliverishness, hairlineful and 34 more...
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texture
suberous, sabulous, indurate, achondrite, wale, corneouss, knit, barathea, trachyte, cancellous, globuliferous, pongee and 29 more...
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learning
A list of words whose meanings I am learning, either because a) I don't know the meaning b) I know the meaning, but could stand to better appreciate certain inflections or secondary meanings or c) ...
louche, educe, loam, cob, sclerotic, palliate, axial, syndicalist, ecumenical, sally, fatuous, parvenu and 1381 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...
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Retroliterals
Words having the letters in reverse alphabetically order. Only words of six or more letters are listed here. For alphabetical order see Alphaliterals. See uoiea and yuoiea for words and phrases wit...
jigged, ligged, miffed, pigged, polked, polled, pollee, pommie, ponged, pongee, ponied, poohed and 75 more...
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Fashion for Poets
Colorful & fun fashion terms
organza, grommet, velveteen, romper, frock, biketards, boning, tankini, décolleté, crepe de chine, crinkle cotton, fishtail train and 66 more...
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piquant's list
fave list from high school
evanescent, wanton, voluptuary, poignant, recalcitrant, multifarious, exhortative, extant, wizened, oblique, munificent, profligate and 11 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pongee.
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