Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • [participial adjective] Kept; held; held over: as, a hodden yow, a ewe intended to be kept over the year; haudin cawf, a calf not fed for sale, but kept that it may grow to maturity.
  • Wearing hodden-gray; rustic.
  • noun Same as hodden-gray.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A coarse woollen fabric

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Mrs. Barrett was a grave, judicious woman, though she knew little more of the world than myself; but grave and judicious as she was, she did not charge me with being out of my senses; and, indeed, I had a staid manner of my own which ere now had been as good to me as cloak and hood of hodden grey, since under its favour

    Villette 2003

  • "Your gown of ` hodden-gray 'is wonderfully becoming, Beck," Lennox said again and again with a secret exulting pride in her.

    Lodusky 1995

  • "Fool!" said the poet, with flashing eye; "it was not the dress, the peasant's bonnet and hodden gray, I spoke to, but the man within -- the man who beneath that bonnet has a head, and beneath that hodden gray a heart, better than a thousand such as yours."

    Life and Conduct J. Cameron Lees

  • The rough farmer in hodden gray had disappeared, and in his place stood a stalwart and handsome young gentleman in green slashed doublet and hosen of soft cream cloth.

    Sea-Dogs All! A Tale of Forest and Sea Tom Bevan

  • Class distinctions were observed rigidly, and the merchant clad in hodden grey and the lawyer robed in black were pushed aside with some contempt when there was any conflict between the aristocrats.

    Heroes of Modern Europe Alice Birkhead

  • Mungo was finished with the coat; he held it out at arm's length, admiring its plenitude of lace, and finally put off his own hodden garment that he might try on the

    Doom Castle Neil Munro

  • Summer was evidently tired of its own lusty life, and had a mind to put on a cowl of hodden-gray, and call itself

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 74, December, 1863 Various

  • The men followed, unhappy in their unaccustomed suits of broad-cloth or hodden, dark, flat-faced, heavy of foot, ruminant, taming their secular thoughts as they passed the licensed houses to some harmony with the sacred nature of their mission.

    Gilian The Dreamer His Fancy, His Love and Adventure Neil Munro

  • As he watched and waited there stole down from the fells above him 'oncome' of mist or 'haar' from the eastward, which soon drew a plaid of hodden grey above the shoulder of Shillmoor.

    Border Ghost Stories Howard Pease

  • He remembered her of old a daring and entrancing vocalist, in the harmony one thread of gold among the hodden grey of those simple unstudied psalmodists.

    Gilian The Dreamer His Fancy, His Love and Adventure Neil Munro

Comments

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  • made of holding?

    October 1, 2011

  •         What though on hamely fare we dine,

            Wear hodden grey, an’ a that;

            Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;

            A Man’s a Man for a’ that.

                    — Robert Burns. “A Man’s a Man for a’ That”. (source)

    P.S.: I’m dubious, fbharjo.

    October 1, 2011

  • The two definitions given by Century Dictionary present a paradox to be explored between the rough fabric and that which is to be held over to maturity (to softened in spirit (harden not your heart)and roughened in appearance.) Pure hypothesis on my part, but worthy of consideration. What is the nature of maturing? Some wines age, others don't and some silks easily snag while others continue be 'teflon' sleek.

    Hamely can be peregrinic or peregrimic. What do you hold and what do you let go?

    October 1, 2011