Hooverette
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 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."
- 2 Alternative letter-case form of Hooverette. alt-of
"Cotton broadcloth hooverette gives double service by reversing the overlapping front"
Example
More examples"The Hooverette can be worn as a dress or as an apron."
Etymology
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.)
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.