Word.ws English Dictionary

dowlas

dowlas noun: a coarse linen cloth made in the north of England and in Scotland, later replaced by calico.

Noun

dowlas (countable and uncountable, plural dowlases)

  1. (historical) A coarse linen cloth made in the north of England and in Scotland, later replaced by calico.
    • Mistress Quickly: I bought you / a dozen of shirts to your back.
      Falstaff: Dowlas, filthy dowlas. I have given them away / to bakers' wives. They have made bolters of them.a. 1597, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, act 3, scene 3

Forms of dowlas

pluraldowlases
alternative formdowlass

Origin of dowlas

Probably from Doullens, a town of Picardy, in France, formerly celebrated for this manufacture.

Questions about dowlas

What does dowlas mean?
Dowlas means a coarse linen cloth made in the north of England and in Scotland, later replaced by calico.
What part of speech is dowlas?
Dowlas is a noun.
What is the plural of dowlas?
The plural of dowlas is dowlases.

Words near dowlas in the dictionary

  1. dowitcher
  2. dowitchers
  3. dowl
  4. Dowlais
  5. Dowlais Top
  6. dowlas
  7. dowlases
  8. dowlass
  9. dowlasses
  10. dowle
  11. Dowlen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dowlas (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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