Also stockinett(e, stockinnet, stockingett(e, -nette. [Prob. a perversion (as if f. STOCKING sb. + -ET, -ETTE) of the older stocking-net: see STOCKING sb. 6 b.]
1. A knitted textile fabric of considerable elasticity used chiefly in the making of undergarments. Also stockinet cloth, material.
1824–. [see 3].
1862. Catal. Internat. Exhib., Brit., II. No. 4176, Woollen Manufacturers…. [Exhibiting] Elastic stockingetts.
1880. Cassell’s Fam. Mag., VI. 442. The stockingette material, or elastic cloth,… is being adapted to whole dresses, tunics [etc.]. Ibid. (1881), VII. 122. Stockingnette has proved this winter a bad investment.
1890. Textile News, 20 June. Stockinettes and fancy woollens.
1905. Daily News, 28 March, 12. An important clue was found in the discovery of three masks of black stockingette.
2. A garment made of stockinet. (Short for stockinet pantaloons, shirt.)
1837. T. Hook, in New Monthly Mag., L. 155. Kittington, the dancing-master, in his stockinets and pumps.
1838. Poe, Narr. A. G. Pym, vii. Wks. 1895, V. 91. The shirt … was a blue stockinet, with large white stripes running across.
b. ? = STOCKING 1 b. (nonce-use.)
1864. Ticknor, Life Prescott, 201. A full-length of Cortés,… his nether extremities in a sort of stockinet, like the old cavaliers of the sixteenth century.
3. attrib. (or adj.) Made of stockinet.
1824. W. Irving, T. Trav., II. 28. He wore a pair of dingy-white stockinet pantaloons.
1884. Girl’s Own Paper, 29 Nov., 138/3. The lady working … wears a stockingette jacket.
