vbl. sb. [f. WAINSCOT v. + -ING1.] The action or process of lining a room, its walls, etc., with wainscot; also concr., panelling of wainscot; also, wainscots collectively.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Lambris, a seeling, wanscotting.
1611. Cotgr., Lambrissage, a wainscotting, or seeling; also, an embowing, or frettizing in wainscot.
1631. Weever, Anc. Funeral Mon., 870. He … bestowed 100. markes vpon wainscotting of the Library there.
1682. Burnet, Life Hale, 39. He laid by all his Collections…, and that they might not fall into ill hands, he hid them behind the Wainscotting of his Study.
1727. De Foe, Eng. Tradesm., xxii. (1841), I. 206. He must sink perhaps a third part, nay, half his stock, in painting and gilding, wainscoting and glazing.
1764. Harmer, Observ., iii. § 8. 97. Their carved wainscottings of wood heightened with painting and gilting.
1836. Dickens, Sk. Boz, Doctor’s Commons. An old quaint-looking apartment, with sunken windows, and black carved wainscotting.
1859. Geo. Eliot, Adam Bede, i. The afternoon sun was warm on the five workmen there, busy upon doors and window frames and wainscoting.
1869. ‘Lewis Carroll,’ Phantasmagoria, 37.
| A new house does not suit, you know— | |
| It ’s such a job to trim it: | |
| But, after twenty years or so, | |
| The wainscotings begin to go, | |
| So twenty is the limit. |
