Word.ws English Dictionary

manteau

/ˈmæntəʊ/

manteau noun: a cloak or gown, especially of a kind popular with women in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Noun

manteau (plural manteaus or manteaux)

  1. A cloak or gown, especially of a kind popular with women in the 17th and 18th centuries.
    • Not to mention the need to keep her manteau from becoming a sort of anti-parachute which sought to lift her free of the pavement.2006, Thomas Pynchon, “Against the Day”, in Against the Day, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, →ISBN, page 816
  2. A long, loose-fitting coat worn by Iranian Muslim women based off the trenchcoat, originally worn with a square Arabic-style hijab and in plain colours, and often associated with liberal politics.
    • As a result of this politics of personal appearance, Iranians have come to refer to three types of woman, defining their politics by the clothes they wear: the chadory, the manteauy, and the maghna'eh-poosh. […] In contrast, the manteauy woman wears the loose-fitting manteau, often fashionably with...2010, Afshin Molavi, The Soul of Iran: A Nation's Struggle for Freedom, W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN, page 91

Forms of manteau

pluralmanteaus
pluralmanteaux

Origin of manteau

Borrowed from French manteau (“mantle”). In the Iranian context, borrowed from Persian مانتو (mânto), originating in the Qajar period. Doublet of mantle and mantel.

Words that rhyme with manteau

Questions about manteau

What does manteau mean?
Manteau means a cloak or gown, especially of a kind popular with women in the 17th and 18th centuries.
What part of speech is manteau?
Manteau is a noun.
How do you pronounce manteau?
Manteau is pronounced /ˈmæntəʊ/.
What is the plural of manteau?
The plural of manteau is manteaus.

Words near manteau in the dictionary

  1. Mantatee
  2. Mantatees
  3. Mantchoo
  4. Mantchoos
  5. Mantchou
  6. manteau
  7. manteaus
  8. manteaux
  9. Manteca
  10. Mantecan
  11. Mantecans

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: manteau (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-manteau.wav.

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