Word.ws English Dictionary

blackwork

blackwork noun: a form of counted-thread embroidery that is usually stitched on even-weave fabric with a twisted thread.

blackwork: a form of counted-thread embroidery that is usually stitched on even-weave fabric with a twisted...
Image: Unidentified painter, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

blackwork (uncountable)

  1. A form of counted-thread embroidery that is usually stitched on even-weave fabric with a twisted thread.
    • All those garments are long gone since, that Katherine embroidered with Spanish blackwork.2020, Hilary Mantel, The Mirror and the Light, Fourth Estate, page 334
  2. (obsolete) Work connected with funerals, as an undertaker's assistant or a maker of mourning clothes, etc.
    • In Mary Barton (1848), the seamstress sewing black mourning clothes is referred to as being engaged in 'blackwork', while the manufacturing company, the Courtaulds, held a monopoly on crapes from the onset of funeral practices […]2016, Haewon Hwang, London's Underground Spaces
  3. A style of tattoo with areas of solid black ink.

Origin of blackwork

From black + work.

Questions about blackwork

What does blackwork mean?
Blackwork means a form of counted-thread embroidery that is usually stitched on even-weave fabric with a twisted thread.
What part of speech is blackwork?
Blackwork is a noun.

Words near blackwork in the dictionary

  1. blackwomen
  2. blackwood
  3. Blackwood Creek
  4. Blackwoodian
  5. blackwoods
  6. blackwork
  7. blackworm
  8. blackworms
  9. blacky
  10. blacky-white
  11. blacky-whites

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blackwork (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “blackwork.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blackwork. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.