- gabardine
- gabardine: [16] The use of gabardine for a sort of worsted material is an early 20th-century development, but the word itself has been around much longer than that. Its central meaning (for which the usual spelling is gaberdine) is ‘long coarse outer garment’. English acquired it from Old French gauvardine, which was a development of an earlier gallevardine. This was probably derived from Middle High German wallevart ‘pilgrimage’ (a compound formed from wallen ‘roam’ and vart ‘journey, way’), and hence etymologically meant ‘pilgrim’s garment’.
- gabardine (n.)
- 1590s, "dress, covering," variant of gaberdine. Meaning "closely woven cloth" is from 1904.