canvases

Noun

canvas (plural canvases or canvasses)

1. A type of coarse cloth, woven from hemp (traditionally) or from cotton and polyesters, useful for making sails, tents, and overcoats or as a surface for paintings.
   • The term canvas is very widely used, as well to denote the coarse fabrics employed for kitchen use, as for strainers, and wraps for meat, as for the best quality of ordinary table and shirting linen.1882, James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, volume 4, page 556
2. (painting) A piece of such cloth stretched across a frame on which one may paint an artwork.
   • She is painting a moonlight scene on the canvas.
3. A mesh of loosely woven cotton strands or molded plastic to be decorated with needlepoint, cross-stitch, rug hooking, or other crafts.
4. (figuratively) A basis for creative work.
   • The author takes rural midwestern life as a canvas for a series of tightly woven character studies
5. A region on which graphics can be rendered.
6. Sails in general.
   • The double desire of being able to overtake a weaker flying enemy, or to escape when pursued by a stronger, has induced the owners to overmast their cruisers, and to spread too much canvass; and the great number of men, many of them not seamen, who being upon deck when a ship heels suddenly are...1785 August, Benjamin Franklin, “On Improvements in Navigation”, in Jared Sparks, editor, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, […], volume III, London: […] [Abraham John Valpy] for...

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