Word.ws English Dictionary

pilot cloth

pilot cloth noun: a coarse, stout kind of cloth for overcoats.

Noun

pilot cloth (countable and uncountable, plural pilot cloths)

  1. A coarse, stout kind of cloth for overcoats.
    • I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation, sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it was the famous...1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The pulpit”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

Forms of pilot cloth

pluralpilot cloths

Origin of pilot cloth

Most likely because its archetypal use was in making pilot jackets for pilots (helmsmen) and pilots (assistants to helmsmen).

Questions about pilot cloth

What does pilot cloth mean?
Pilot cloth means a coarse, stout kind of cloth for overcoats.
What part of speech is pilot cloth?
Pilot cloth is a noun.
What is the plural of pilot cloth?
The plural of pilot cloth is pilot cloths.

Words near pilot cloth in the dictionary

  1. pilot boat
  2. pilot boats
  3. pilot bread
  4. pilot burner
  5. pilot burners
  6. pilot cloth
  7. pilot cloths
  8. pilot coat
  9. pilot coats
  10. pilot engine
  11. pilot engines

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pilot cloth (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: “pilot cloth.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pilot_cloth. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.