corduroy

/ˈkɔːdɹɔɪ/UK/ˈkɔːdəɹɔɪ/

corduroy noun: a heavy fabric, usually made of cotton, with vertical ribs.

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Noun

corduroy (countable and uncountable, plural corduroys)

A heavy fabric, usually made of cotton, with vertical ribs.
- Sunning himself on the board steps, I saw for the first time Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke.[…]A silver snaffle on a heavy leather watch guard which connected the pockets of his corduroy waistcoat, together with a huge gold stirrup in his Ascot tie, sufficiently proclaimed his tastes.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter II, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC
- We turned to see a muscular young man lounging in the door which led into the sitting-room. He wore green corduroy trousers, a duffle coat and an old school tie.1956, Delano Ames, chapter 4, in Crime out of Mind
(Ireland, obsolete, slang) Cheap and poor-quality whiskey.
- Another description of what would be termed adulterated spirits, is by the vulgar termed "Corduroy," on account of the rough feeling which it imparts to the tongue and palate.[1834 June 16, John Edgar, “Minutes of Evidence, Monday, the Sixteenth Day of June, 1834”, in Evidence on Drunkenness, London: British and Foreign Temperance Society, published 1834, page 93
- To men of common gumption, / Hot strange, besides, must seem / At this time any scheme / To put a check upon potheen's consumption, / When all are calling for Irish Poor Laws! / Instead of framing more laws, / To pauperism if you'd give a pegger, / Don't check, but patronise their...1835, Thomas Hood, “Ode to J. S. Buckingham, Esq. M.P.”, in The Comic Annual, pages 135–136
Synonyms:

kill-the-beggar
A pattern on snow resulting from the use of a snow groomer to pack snow and improve skiing, snowboarding and snowmobile trail conditions. Corduroy is widely regarded as a good surface on which to ski or ride.

Adjective

corduroy (not comparable)

Of a road, path, etc., paved with split or round logs laid crosswise side by side.
- Swamps had to be crossed by means of corduroy causeways; made by cutting down trees and laying them horizontally on the quivering mass of boggy ground.1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 146

Verb

corduroy (third-person singular simple present corduroys, present participle corduroying, simple past and past participle corduroyed)

To make (a road) by laying down split logs or tree-trunks over a marsh, swamp etc.
- The night was very dark and it rained heavily, the roads were so bad that the troops had to cut trees and corduroy the road a part of the way, to get through.1886, Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, chapter 53
- But Sherman organized “pioneer battalions” of soldiers and freedmen […] to cut saplings and trees to corduroy the roads, build bridges, and construct causeways.1988, James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, Oxford, published 2004, pages 827–8

corduroy meaning in Urdu

corduroy in Urdu

corduroy: کٹرائی kaṭrāī

Examples of corduroy in a sentence

Soon, the incessant wind would dry the stenchy wallow to corduroyed cement.
This time I wrapped the doll in corduroy before I chucked it in.
He is dressed in an old sweater, corduroy trousers, sandles and elastoplasted spectacles.

All 15 example sentences with corduroy

Synonyms of corduroy

kill-the-beggar

Forms of corduroy

Noun
plural	corduroys
Verb
third-person singular present	corduroys
present participle	corduroying
past participle	corduroyed
past	corduroyed

Plural of corduroy: corduroys

Origin of corduroy

Origin uncertain. Probably from cord + duroy (“a 17th century coarse fabric made in England”). Probably not from French *corde du roi (“cloth of the king”), which is unattested in French, where the term for the corduroy is velours côtelé. Possibly from cordesoy from corde de soie (“rope of silk or silk-like fabric”), named for example in a 1756 advertisement for clothing fabrics; see Wikipedia article, and comparable in language form to the contemporary serg(e)dusoys (“silk serge”), see Serge (fabric).

Words formed from corduroy

Phrases with corduroy

corduroy roads

Questions about corduroy

What does corduroy mean?: Corduroy means a heavy fabric, usually made of cotton, with vertical ribs.
What is corduroy in Urdu?: Corduroy in Urdu is کٹرائی (kaṭrāī). See Corduroy meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is corduroy?: Corduroy can be a noun, an adjective or a verb.
How do you pronounce corduroy?: Corduroy is pronounced /ˈkɔːdəɹɔɪ/ (UK).
What is the plural of corduroy?: The plural of corduroy is corduroys.

Words near corduroy in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: corduroy (page history and authors); کٹرائی (Urdu) (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-corduroy.ogg.

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