tartaning

Verb

tartan (third-person singular simple present tartans, present participle tartaning, simple past and past participle tartaned)

1. (transitive) To clothe (someone) in tartan (noun etymology 1, noun sense 1.2).
   • That 42d tartan is Campbell tartan rests upon the fact that the Black Watch was officered by a large majority of Campbells at first. When I was first tartaned, more than fifty years ago, I was taken by John Campbell, piper, to the shop of his brother William, in Glasgow, to be tailored.1881 July 5 (date written), Archibald Campbell, quoting John F. Campbell, “Notes on the Antiquity of the Dress, Clan Colours, or Tartans, of the Highlanders [Early Notices of Tartan]”, in Records of...
2. (transitive) To apply a tartan pattern to (something).
   • The unholy beast in the box was the most splendid and graceful specimen of the monitor lizard I have ever seen. […] Smooth, though scaly, and inky black, tartaned all over with transverse rows of bright yellow spots, with eyes that shone like wild-fire, and teeth like quartz, with his forked tongue...1873 July 26, “Blue-jackets’ Pets”, in William and Robert Chambers, editors, Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Art, volume X (4th Series), number 500, London; Edinburgh: W. & R....
3. (figuratively, transitive) To make (something) Scottish, or more Scottish; to tartanize.
   • The premier [Angus Lewis Macdonald] was photographed repeatedly at the annual Gaelic Mod, and sitting at a loom in a display of Highland handicrafts in Scotland itself. The premier also focused his attention on the tartaning of the provincially owned Keltic Lodge.1992 spring, Ian McKay, “Tartanism Triumphant: The Construction of Scottishness in Nova Scotia, 1933–1954”, in Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region, volume 21, number 2...

See all 15 meanings of tartan