Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A garment formerly worn by men under a doublet.
- noun Chiefly British A short, sleeveless, collarless garment worn especially over a shirt and often under a suit jacket; a vest.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A name of various garments.
- noun A garment without sleeves worn under a coat. They were formerly long, reaching sometimes to the thighs, and were made of rich and bright-colored material; now they are worn much shorter. They are generally single-breasted, but double-breasted waistcoats have been in fashion at different times.
- noun A garment worn by women in imitation of a man's waistcoat. Compare .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A short, sleeveless coat or garment for men, worn under the coat, extending no lower than the hips, and covering the waist; a vest.
- noun A garment occasionally worn by women as a part of fashionable costume.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a man's sleeveless garment worn underneath a coat
Etymologies
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Examples
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chained_bear commented on the word waistcoat
Pronounced (and therefore some people spell it as) "weskit."
August 26, 2008
qroqqa commented on the word waistcoat
Certainly in standard British speech, the spelling pronunciation /ˈweɪsˌkəʊt/ outnumbers the older /ˈweskət/, if that was ever standard. (The OED, with W not recently revised, calls the latter 'colloq. or vulgar', and though it notes the spelling 'weskit', gives no examples.) However, I can't back up this preferred pronunciation with numbers.
August 26, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word waistcoat
I just meant here, where I work, it's generally pronounced "weskit," but spelled "waistcoat."
(Edit: a minor note, I can't actually see most of the pronunciation characters in your comment, except for the schwa. FYI)
August 26, 2008
qroqqa commented on the word waistcoat
Ugh! I don't want to go back to SAMPA /"weIsk@Ut/, but the limited HTML here offers no control over fonts. I see the IPA characters in a completely different font: Lucida Sans Unicode, I believe, an ugly one I try to avoid when I have CSS or HTML control over it. So, as with IPA generally, it's just blind luck if any one viewer's browser supports it.
August 27, 2008
frindley commented on the word waistcoat
Then there's the matter of what's a waistcoat and what's a vest.
August 27, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word waistcoat
Frindley: If I had to guess, I'd say vests are much shorter/modern-looking. But that is by no means a technical (or even correct) answer.
August 27, 2008