CALICO • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Calico

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/kˈæləkˌoʊ/ Listen

noun

Calico n. (pl. calicoes)

Plain white cloth made from cotton, but which receives distinctive names according to quality and use, as, super calicoes, shirting calicoes, unbleached calicoes, etc. (Eng.) "The importation of printed or stained colicoes appears to have been coeval with the establishment of the East India Company".

Cotton cloth printed with a figured pattern. Note: In the United States the term calico is applied only to the printed fabric.

Calico bass (Zool.), an edible, fresh-water fish (Pomoxys sparaides) of the rivers and lake of the Western United States (esp. of the Misissippi valley.), allied to the sunfishes, and so called from its variegated colors; called also calicoback, grass bass, strawberry bass, barfish, and bitterhead.

Calico printing, the art or process of impressing the figured patterns on calico.

adjective

Calico adj. Made of, or having the appearance of, calico; often applied to an animal, as a horse or cat, on whose body are large patches of a color strikingly different from its main color. (Colloq. U. S.)

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Etymology of 'Calico'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Calico" Quotes from Famous Books

... The last of the trio was the most amusing; his face was blacked and a wig of kinky black hair stood out in dozens of tiny braids, each tied with a different colored string. He wore a red and white calico dress that was just short enough to show his big, clumsy boots. He made a very deep bow before Sally and said in ...

— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill

... least older than a great many of our considerable cities. But you would think this was at the beginning. There are the natives, and there are the dogs, just as they were when Sir Alexander came through. Perhaps they didn't have so much calico then. Of course they didn't have repeating-rifles then, and surely not steel traps. But they talked the same language, and in my opinion they had about as much religion then as they ...

— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough

... the clothes off him, and has occasion to be taken up in the night, and if he have not a flannel gown on, is likely to catch cold; on which account I recommend it to be worn. The usual calico night-gown should be ...

— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... days, tinged with no trace of blue, when I attended the district school, wearing trousers buttoned to a calico waist. I had ambitions then—I was sure that some day I could spell down the school, propound a problem in fractions that would puzzle the teacher, and play checkers in a way that would cause my name to be known throughout the ...

— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... remark that the bullocks at Ambong were remarkably fine and the price of them ridiculously cheap. Two of the largest were to be purchased for about twenty-five shillings worth of calico or any other European manufacture. Wherever we went on this island, and I may say over the Indian archipelago generally, the spirit of trade and barter appeared to be universal; and if the inhabitants of Borneo ...

— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

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