Verdingale

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A hooped undergarment worn beneath a skirt in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries to give the dress a wide, stiff shape
2. An Elizabethan framework of cane or whalebone hoops, worn under the skirts to hold them out from the hips
3. A type of farthingale, a padded or hooped petticoat that fashionable women of the Renaissance wore to flare their gowns

Etymology: The word is an obsolete spelling of "farthingale," the hooped petticoat or framework that Elizabethan and Jacobean women wore beneath their skirts to hold them out in a wide, stiff bell. Its earlier spellings, such as "vardingale," show how English speakers struggled with a foreign name, and the ancestry runs through three languages before it reached English. The chain begins in Spanish, where "verdugado" described a garment stiffened with rods, derived from "verdugo," meaning a rod or switch. The French borrowed it as "verdugale," and English speakers then took it over, reshaping it into forms that eventually settled as "farthingale." The "farthing" in that spelling is a coincidence of sound rather than a true link to the small English coin, though the popular association with the farthing has persisted in the spelling ever since.

Synonyms: farthingale