Drapers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A merchant or shopkeeper specializing in selling cloth, fabric, and various textile goods
2. Someone who operates a business dealing primarily in apparel fabrics and related items for tailored garments
3. A retail professional who focuses on the sale of textiles, fabrics, and related products intended for clothing or home decor

Etymology: "Drapers" is the plural of "draper", so the word traces back to the cloth itself. The base is "drap", an Old French term for cloth, which English inherited through the Anglo-Norman of the Norman period. Old French then built "drapier" from "drap" by adding the suffix "-ier", a common way of naming a person by trade, so a drapier was someone who worked with cloth. That pattern is the same one behind words like "brazier" or "glazier". Middle English took the trade term as "draper", and the plural "drapers" follows the same logic: a group of cloth-dealers. The word stayed closely tied to the textile trade, which is why the modern sense still centres on fabric and the garments made from it.

Synonyms: tailors, clothiers