hoop-petticoat

Nott inscribes his book “To all Good Housewives,” and declares that he placed an Introduction before it merely because fashion had made it as strange for a book to appear without one as for a man to be seen in church without a neckcloth or a lady without a hoop-petticoat.

Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine 2006

'I find several speculative persons are of opinion that our sex has of late years been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made use of to keep us at a distance.

The Coverley Papers Various

The torn card may probably be dropped by the well-dressed gamester, who has exchanged the dice-box for the mallet, and whose laced hat is hung up as a companion trophy to the hoop-petticoat.

The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency John Trusler

The hoop-petticoat came into fashion, and the dress was looped up at intervals to show the richly-coloured skirt below.

With Marlborough to Malplaquet A Story of the Reign of Queen Anne Herbert Strang

'Among these various conjectures, there are men of superstitious tempers, who look upon the hoop-petticoat as a kind of prodigy.

The Coverley Papers Various

A lass of six years is bound up in a whalebone waist; her large hoop-petticoat supports a skirt covered with wreaths; she wears on her head a skillful combination of false curls, puffs, and knots, fastened with pins, and crowned with plumes, and so high that frequently "the chin is half way down to her feet"; sometimes they put rouge on her face.

The Ancient Regime Hippolyte Taine 1860

A white muslin dress, not expanded by the stiff, ceremonious hoop-petticoat, but falling down in ample folds, wrapped up her tall, noble figure, a small lace kerchief covered the beautiful neck, and in part the splendid shoulders.

Empress Josephine An historical sketch of the days of Napoleon 1843

By bribes of gingerbread of her own making, stamped with a royal crown, she tempted their sunny sportiveness beneath the gloomy portal of the province-house, and would often beguile them to spend a whole play-day there, sitting in a circle round the verge of her hoop-petticoat, greedily attentive to her stories of a dead world.

Twice Told Tales Nathaniel Hawthorne 1834

And, to do the people justice, stern republicans as they had now become, they were well content that the old gentlewoman, in her hoop-petticoat and faded embroidery, should still haunt the palace of ruined pride and overthrown power, the symbol of a departed system, embodying a history in her person.

Twice Told Tales Nathaniel Hawthorne 1834

Her spangled shoes and gold-clocked stockings shone gloriously within the spacious circle of a red hoop-petticoat, which swelled to the very point of explosion, and was bedecked all over with embroidery a little tarnished.

An Old Woman's Tale (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") Nathaniel Hawthorne 1834