cloth

Noun

cloth (countable and uncountable, plural cloths or (obsolete) clothes)

1. A fabric, usually made of woven, knitted, or felted fibres or filaments, such as used in dressing, decorating, cleaning or other practical use. Sometimes, woven fabric specifically.
   • Near-synonyms: (not always differentiated) fabric, material (fabric sense), textile; see also Thesaurus:fabric
   • In trumpets for assisting the hearing, all reverbation of the trumpet must be avoided. It must be made thick, of the least elastic materials, and covered with cloth externally.1820, Encyclopaedia Britannica; Or A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature, 6th edition, volume 20, Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Company, page 501

   Synonyms:

   fabric, material, textile, stuff

2. Specifically, a tablecloth, especially as spread before a meal or removed afterwards.
   • One day he came, as I thought accidentally, to dinner. My huſband was very much engaged in buſineſs, and quitted the room ſoon after the cloth was removed.1798, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, “[Maria: or, The] Wrongs of Woman”, in W[illiam] Godwin, editor, Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. […], volume II, London: […]...
3. (countable) A piece of cloth used for a particular purpose.
   • The first room the people enter was formerly the Presence Chamber, which is hung completely with black, and at the r-end a cloth of estate, with a chair of estate standing upon the Haut-place under the state.1824, The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction
   • The stole is a long scarf-like cloth that hangs around the neck, over the shoulders and down the front of bishops and priests [generally, two-four inches across].2004, Robin D. Gill, Topsy-turvy 1585, →ISBN
4. (figuratively) Substance or essence; the whole of something complex.
   • . If we look beyond the chaos of each moment, we cannot help seeing that we are but one glorious thread in the cloth of life.2001, Sang H. Kim, The Art of Harmony: A Guide to Happiness, →ISBN, page 14
   • The disparate threads contained are, in the cloth of a religious society, ready to revolutionize the world and bring the Kingdom of Heaven into its full reality on earth.2004, Thomas D. Hamm, The Quakers in America, →ISBN, page 124
5. (figuratively) Appearance; seeming.
   • Like all cultural realities, contemporary modernism is packed with its own myths, its own largely unrecognized metaphors, its own poetics literally perceived -- or should we say, "misperceived"? -- its own reifications and idiosyncratic distinctions. And it comes to us decorated in the cloth of...2002, Patricia L. Munhall, Ed Madden, Virginia Macken Fitzsimons, The Emergence of Man Into the 21st Century, →ISBN, page 407
   • Unbelievably, he smiled through his cracked and bleeding lips. A horrible nightmare cloaked in the cloth of good.2007, Kathy Steffen, First, There Is a River, →ISBN
6. A form of attire that represents a particular profession or status.
   • But he could not come in the white cloth of celebration to a burial service, and he could hardly come in the cloth of mourning to celebrate his two decades on the stool.1993, Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture, →ISBN, page 185
   • Wearing the cloth of kings would seem to be an appropriate symbol.2004, Alison Dundes Renteln, The Cultural Defense, →ISBN, page 151
7. (idiomatic, with-definite-article) The priesthood.
   • He is a respected man of the cloth.
   • As someone who finds clear shouts of lively encouragement easier to identify than the “still small voice of calm”, like the prairie rodent I scurried off to various members of the cloth to ask how they ascertained their calling.2025 June 20, Josephine Gabelman, “Differentiating between career progression and God’s call”, in Church Times