Drabcloth

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A coarse, undyed woolen fabric of a dull brownish or grey shade, once used for everyday clothing and workwear
2. An inexpensive rough woolen cloth in a plain dull brown or grey, historically woven for common garments
3. Coarse woven wool in a drab, muted brown-grey tone, traditionally used for hard-wearing plain clothes

Etymology: "Drabcloth" is a plain compound, joining "drab" and "cloth" with no further history attached to it. Its first element, "drab," is the word for a dull, brownish-grey color, and in the sense that matters here it describes undyed or coarsely finished fabric in that same muted shade. The second element, "cloth," is the ordinary English word for woven or felted material, so the compound simply names a cloth of that drab tone. The meaning is therefore literal rather than figurative: the word describes the look of the fabric itself. Because the parts are transparent, the sense of the whole can be read straight from them, with no shift in meaning between the components and the joined term.