Nankeen

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A type of cotton cloth originally from Nanking in China. countable, uncountable

    "1885, L. and A. Maude (translators), Leo Tolstoy, "What Men Live By", in What Men Live By and Other Tales He put on over his shirt his wife's wadded nankeen jacket, and over that he put his own cloth coat."

  2. 2
    a durable fabric formerly loomed by hand in China from natural cotton having a yellowish color wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
corduroycottonfabricnylon

Example

More examples

"1885, L. and A. Maude (translators), Leo Tolstoy, "What Men Live By", in What Men Live By and Other Tales He put on over his shirt his wife's wadded nankeen jacket, and over that he put his own cloth coat."

Etymology

Eye spelling of Nanking, itself a romanization of Chinese 南京 (Nánjīng, literally “Southern capital”).

Related phrases

nankeen kestrelnankeen night heron

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.