Aiton’s Encyclopedia
A Practical Reference Library in Five Volumes — keyed from the public-domain original
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Gabardine

a long, loose, coarse cloak, with or without sleeves and a hood. It was an outdoor garment worn by peasants and workmen and by Jews. The laws of the Middle Ages forbade the Jew to wear the cloak of a gentleman; hence the gabardine carried with it the idea of social inferiority.

You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gabardine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
--Merchant of Venice.

Here was a Tangier merchant in sky-blue gabardine with a Persian shawl twisted around his waist.--Aldrich, Ponkapog to Pesth.

Volume II · Aiton’s Encyclopedia