Word.ws English Dictionary

hooverette

hooverette is the alternative letter-case form of Hooverette.

Noun capitalized: Hooverette

Hooverette (plural Hooverettes)

  1. A simple housedress with robe-style sash and wrap front, worn especially in United States in the 1930s and 1940s, with one section overlapping another; when dirty, the overlap could be reversed so a clean section was on top again, reducing laundry.
    • The Hooverette can be worn as a dress or as an apron.1932, Elmer Wheeler, Tested Selling Sentences (the Language of the Brain): Master Book
    • “I have so few opportunities to wear such a dress, that I thought I'd better take every one that offered.” “In Paris you would need such a frock every evening,” observed Lynnette admiringly. “I'd rather stay at home and wear Hooverettes […]”1937, Lucy Poate Stebbins, The Golden Carlotta

Forms of hooverette

pluralhooverettes
pluralHooverettes
alternative formhooverette

Origin of hooverette

Like many things used by impoverished people during the Great Depression (e.g. Hoover hogs, Hoovervilles), the dress was named after Herbert Hoover, US president when the Depression began, + -ette. (It has also been suggested that the name might not refer to the inexpensiveness but liken the dress's effectiveness as work clothing to Hoover's pre-presidential career as an effective administrator of aid to Europe after the First World War.)

Questions about hooverette

What does hooverette mean?
Hooverette means a simple housedress with robe-style sash and wrap front, worn especially in United States in the 1930s and 1940s, with one section overlapping another; when dirty, the overlap could be reversed so a clean section was on top again, reducing laundry.
What is hooverette the alternative letter-case form of?
Hooverette is the alternative letter-case form of Hooverette.
What part of speech is hooverette?
Hooverette is a noun.
What is the plural of hooverette?
The plural of hooverette is hooverettes.

Words near hooverette in the dictionary

  1. Hoover wagons
  2. Hoovercrat
  3. Hoovercrats
  4. hoovered
  5. hoovered up
  6. hooverette
  7. hooverettes
  8. Hooverian
  9. hoovering
  10. hoovering up
  11. hooverings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hooverette (page history and authors); Hooverette (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: “hooverette.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hooverette. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.