[f. LAWN sb.1 + -Y.]
1. Made of lawn.
1598. Bp. Hall, Sat., IV. iv. 31. When a plum’d Fanne may shade thy chalked face, And lawny strips thy naked bosome grace.
1604. Drayton, Moses Map Miracles, 12. The … winde … was … angrie with her lawnie vaile, That from his sight it enuiouslie should hide her.
1641. Milton, Ch. Govt., II. iii. Wks. 1851, III. 173. Not she her selfe … but a false-whited, a lawnie resemblance of her.
1657. Thornley, trans. Longus’ Daphnis & Chloe, 2. Their vests, and lawnie-petticoats tied, and tuckt up at the waste.
1795. Coleridge, Lewti, v. Perhaps the breezes … Have snatched aloft the lawny shroud Of Lady fair—that died for love.
1817. Keats, Sleep & Beauty, 374. A fold of lawny mantle dabbling swims At the bath’s edge.
1825. Blackw. Mag., XVIII. 446. Heaven’s gleam Her light loose lawny vestment silver’d.
1853. De Quincey, Autobiogr. Sk., Wks. I. 23. Visions of beds with white lawny curtains.
b. Dressed in lawn; also pertaining to a wearer of lawn, i.e., a bishop.
1647. Ward, Simp. Cobler, 71. Let Salvation come … with … lawny embracements.
1691. C. Blount, Opening of Session, in Collect. of Poems, 21. Their Lawney Conscience, whose Designs were seen, In voting out the King to serve the Queen.
1742–8. Shenstone, Schoolmistr., 134. The times when … lawny saints in smould’ring flames did burn.
2. Resembling lawn; lawn-like; † soft as lawn.
1615. Crooke, Body of Man, v. Pref. (1631), 257. As a Spider in the center of her Lawny Canopy with admirable skil weaueth her Cipresse web.
1618. N. Ward, S. Ward’s Jethro, Ep. Ded. Impatient of cure; not only of searching acrimonious waters … but shie of the most soft and lawny touches.
1880. Miss Broughton, Second Thoughts, III. iii. Her eyes are absently fixed on the lawny mists that swathe the fells’ fair necks.
