Also 5 gardyng. [f. CARD v.1 + -ING1; with the form gardyng cf. OF. guerder = carder (Littré, Suppl.).]
1. The dressing of wool, cotton, etc., with cards or in a carding-machine.
1468. in Ripon Ch. Acts (1882), 134. Spynnyng et cardyng in festo S. Mathi.
a. 1485. Pol. Poems (1859), II. 284. Thei putt owte of purse, As myche for gardyng, spynnyng, and wevyng.
1727. De Foe, Eng. Tradesm., xlvii. (1841), II. 189. The carding is generally done by hired servants.
1851. Art Jrnl. Illust. Catal., p. v**/1. The carding depends more on the quality of the cards than upon any attention or skill in the operatives.
b. concr. The carded product.
1837. Whittock, Bk. Trades (1842), 170. The fibres of the cotton … when sufficiently combed are called cardings.
2. Torturing with wool-combs. Cf. CARD v.1 4.
1828. Heber, Journ. India, III. 348. The work of carding … murder and robbery, goes on as systematically.
3. attrib. (sense 1), as in carding-cylinder, -mill, -room; carding-engine, machine, a machine for combing or cleansing wool or cotton, in which a large cylinder set with cards works in connection with smaller cylinders and a hollow shell similarly set with cards.
1860. Smiles, Self-Help, ii. 35. One of the first … to adopt the *carding cylinder.
1795. Caledonian Mercury, 8 Jan., 4/1. The whole Cotton Machinery … consisting of five common *carding engines, [etc.].
1835. Ure, Philos. Manuf., 111. Towards one end of this floor are distributed the carding-engines.
1822. J. Flint, Lett. fr. Amer., 72. A fulling-mill, a *carding-mill, and a mill for bruising flax-seed.
1854. Mrs. Gaskell, North & S., xiii. I began to work in a *carding room soon after, and the fluff got into my lungs, and poisoned me.
