A double-breasted coat with skirts extending almost to the knees, which are not cut away but of the same length in front as behind.
1823. Spirit Pub. Jrnls. (1824), 60. A regularly built green frock coat, not forgetting the velvet collar.
1835. Willis, Pencillings (1836), II. xliv. 46. He sat on a divan, cross-legged, in a military frock-coat.
1836–7. Dickens, Sk. Boz (1850), 192/1. He usually wore a brown frock-coat without a wrinkle.
1886. Hall Caine, Son of Hagar, II. xvi. There was John Proudfoot, the blacksmith, uncommonly awkward in a frock coat and a pair of kid gloves that sat on his great hands like a clout on a pitchfork.
Hence Frock-coated ppl. a., wearing a frock-coat.
1852. R. S. Surtees, Sponge’s Sp. Tour (1893), 205–6. The people … could hardly recognise the frock-coated, fancy-vested, military-trousered swell as Lord Scamperdale.
