Also 8 corderoy, 9 cord de roy, corde du roy. [A name app. of English invention: either originally intended, or soon after assumed, to represent a supposed Fr. *corde du roi ‘the king’s cord’; it being a kind of ‘cord’ or corded fustian.
No such name has ever been used in French: on the contrary, among a list of articles manufactured at Sens in 1807, Millin de Grandmaison, Voyage d. Départ. du Midi, I. 144 enumerates ‘étoffes de coton, futaines, kings-cordes,’ evidently from English. Wolstenholme’s Patent of 1776 mentions nearly every thing of the fustian kind except corduroy, which yet was well known by 1790. Duroy occurs with serge and drugget as a coarse woollen fabric manufactured in Somersetshire in the 18th c., but it has no apparent connection with corduroy. A possible source has been pointed out in the English surname Corderoy.]
A. sb.
1. A kind of coarse, thick-ribbed cotton stuff, worn chiefly by laborers or persons engaged in rough work.
1795. [see B. 1].
c. 1810. Rees, Cycl., s.v. Fustian, This manufacture … comprehends the cotton stuffs known by the names of corduroy, velverett, velveteen, thicksett, [etc.].
1820. Syd. Smith, Lett., clxxv. No distant climes demand our corduroy, Unmatched habiliment for man and boy.
1836. Ure, Cotton Manuf., II. 332. Eight-shaft cord, vulgarly called corduroy.
1878. Black, Green Past., x. 84. He was dressed for the most part in shabby corduroy.
b. Extended as a trade name to other fabrics of similar appearance.
1884. Even. Standard, 28 Aug., 4/3. Corduroy is the ‘coming material.’… The new corde du roy will be a dainty silken fabric, as indeed it was in the beginning. [A baseless assertion.]
2. pl. Corduroy trousers. colloq.
1787–91. ‘G. Gambado,’ Acad. Horsem., xv. (1809), 127. Nothing but a pair of corderoys between him and the Horse’s back.
1861. Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxf., xii. (1889), 114. I shifted a fellow in corduroys on to him, whom I had found an uncommon tough customer.
3. A corduroy road (see B. 3); the structure of such a road.
1836. [Mrs. Traill], Backwoods of Canada, 114. Over these abominable corduroys the vehicle jolts, jumping from log to log.
1865. G. W. Nichols, Story Great March, 191. Long timbers both above and beneath, placed parallel to the road, and pinned to the corduroy.
1884. J. A. Butler, in Harper’s Mag., June, 105/2. The government road along the shore in comparison with which the roughest ‘corduroy’ would appear a brilliant modern innovation.
B. adj. [attrib. use of the sb.]
1. Made of the fabric corduroy.
1795. Hull Advertiser, 10 Oct., 2/1. An old brown coat, and old corduroy breeches.
1849. E. E. Napier, Excurs. S. Africa, II. 418. The antigropolos boots, and everlasting corduroy breeches.
2. Ribbed and furrowed like corduroy.
1865. Ecclesiologist, Feb., 13. Their surface was so deeply chiselled over with ‘corduroy’ work, that any attempt to repolish them would be hopeless.
1891. Daily News, 20 May, 3/1. Some of it is striped in tiny ridges, and is therefore called corduroy crêpon, though the ridges are merely miniatures of the furrows in corduroy.
3. U.S. Applied to a road or causeway constructed of trunks of trees laid together transversely across a swamp or miry ground; hence, to bridges, etc., of the same construction.
1830. Galt, Lawrie T., III. i. (1849), 85. The anguish we endured from the corduroy crossways.
1837. Ht. Martineau, Soc. in Amer., I. 318. Picking our way along the swampy corduroy road.
1875. trans. Comte de Paris’ Civ. War Amer., II. 9. The whole Federal army was at work … constructing long solid corduroy causeways through the marshy forests.
1882. [Lees & Clutterbuck], Three in Norway, vii. 48. There is a corduroy bridge over the Slangen River.
