[App. an alteration of LUSTRING (which, however, appears later in our quots.), assimilated to prec.] A kind of glossy silk fabric; a dress or a ribbon of this material.
1661. Pepys, Diary, 18 Feb. We went to a mercer’s … and there she bought a suit of Lutestring for herself.
1686. Lond. Gaz., No. 2126/4. To be sold … a parcel of very good black narrow Lute-Strings, and Alamode-Silks.
1704. Pope, Lett. (1736), V. 124. Think of flouncing the petticoat so very deep, that it looks like an entire coat of lute-string!
1767. Woman of Fashion, I. 78. She was dressed in a flowing Negligee of white Lutestring.
1799. G. Smith, Laboratory, II. 46. To draw a pattern for a silver brocade lutestring.
1856. Mrs. Browning, Aur. Leigh, VI. 715. As if you had … held your trailing lutestring up yourself.
1887. Macm. Mag., LV. 108. A suit of white lutestring trimmed with large bunches of acorns.
† b. To speak in lutestring: (meaning uncertain).
The phrase ‘which I met with in the course of my reading’ is several times derisively quoted by Junius as used by the Duke of Grafton. Cf. quot. a. 1797 in c.
1771. Junius Lett., xlviii. 259. I was led to trouble you with these observations by a passage, which, to speak in lutestring, I met with this morning in the course of my reading.
c. attrib.
1759. Compl. Lett.-writer (ed. 6), 222. Dressed in a white lutestring gown and petticoat.
1768. C’tess Cowper, Lett. to Mrs. Delany, in Mrs. D.’s Life & Corr., Ser. II. I. 186. Lord Spencer had a pale blue lutestring domino.
a. 1797. H. Walpole, Mem. Geo. III. (1845), I. xiv. 210. He [Chas. Townshend] had said of the last arrangement before Fox was set at the head, that it was a pretty lutestring administration which would do very well for summer wear.
