seersucker

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (1)  · 
“
They were tanned and toned in seersucker, the very image of the American rich on vacation.

View all »
Definitions (6)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun A light thin fabric, generally cotton or rayon, with a crinkled surface and a usually striped pattern.
  2. Word History
    Through its etymology, seersucker gives us a glimpse into the history of India. The word came into English from Hindi sīrsakar, which had been borrowed from the Persian compound shīroshakar, meaning literally "milk and sugar” but used figuratively for a striped linen garment. The Persian word shakar, "sugar,” in turn came from Sanskrit śarkarā. The linguistic borrowings here reflect a broader history of cultural borrowing. In the 6th century the Persians borrowed not only the word for sugar from India but sugar itself. During and after Tamerlane's invasion of India in the late 14th century, opportunities for borrowing Persian things and words such as shīroshakar were widespread, since Tamerlane incorporated Persia as well as India into his empire. It then remained for the English to borrow from an Indian language the material and its name seersucker (first recorded in 1722 in the form Sea Sucker) during the 18th century, when the East India Company and England were moving toward imperial supremacy in India.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (2)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (1)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (30)

  • When he was eight or nine years old, he'd been earning nickels running errands for seersucker-clad gents who sat in green rocking chairs on the downstairs gallery. —  F ;SF; - vol 104 issue 01 - January 2003
  • Other tournaments that award jackets are the Stanford St. Jude Championship (seersucker), the Memorial (gray), the FBR Open (blue) and the Quail Hollow Championship (light blue).
  • The seersucker has been shoved to the back of the closet. —  On the Wine Trail in Italy
  • The cardinal aspect of this deviant has merged the feel of summer (seersucker) with winter (velour). —  On the Wine Trail in Italy
  • This spot is also where Robert Imber, the often seersucker-clad architectural guru and one-man show behind —  NYT > Travel
More examples »
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 80 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Hindi sīrsakar, from Persian shīroshakar : shīr, milk (from Middle Persian) + o, and (from Middle Persian u, from Old Persian utā) + shakar, sugar (from Sanskrit śarkarā, from the resemblance of its smooth and rough stripes to the smooth surface of milk and bumpy texture of sugar).

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. East Indian
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/ˈsirsəkər/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about once a year.

Recently looked up

off-topic · shocked · hornbeam · expedition · squall

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

eu oi oìa u ou e u oìa · the octopi are dry · Kansas City · spell it rite · put it in your pocket