What does cottonade mean?
Cottonade is a strong cotton fabric woven with a twill structure and often given a finish that makes it resemble wool. Durable and inexpensive, it was widely used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for trousers, work clothes, and other hard-wearing garments, particularly where lighter all-cloth alternatives to wool were wanted. The word can denote the material itself, as in 'trousers of grey cottonade', or appear in the plural, 'cottonades', to refer to a garment made from it. Today it survives mostly in historical writing, costume scholarship, antique trade catalogues, and accounts of nineteenth-century commerce, having been displaced in everyday use by fabrics such as denim and drill. Its suffix -ade marks it as a French borrowing built on 'cotton', signalling simply 'a thing made of cotton'. For readers of period literature, it is a useful marker of humble, practical dress rather than finery.
A durable twilled cotton fabric, often finished to imitate wool, used especially for trousers and work clothes.
"The tailor recommended cottonade for the boy's everyday trousers because it washed well and wore hard."
Used as an uncountable noun for the cloth itself.
(In the plural) A garment, especially a pair of trousers, made of cottonade.
"He rolled up his cottonades before wading into the creek."
Usually encountered as 'cottonades' in historical sources.
The plural most often refers to garments, especially trousers, made of the fabric rather than to multiple bolts of cloth.
"The inventory recorded forty pairs of cottonades destined for the trading post."
Before denim conquered the world's workwear, cottonade was the tough twill holding up nineteenth-century trousers.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of cottonade
Cottonade comes from French cotonnade, formed from coton ('cotton') with the -ade suffix denoting a product or article made of the base material, on the model of words like lemonade. English adopted the term in the eighteenth century, when such sturdy cotton twills were common trade goods. It shares its ultimate root with 'cotton' itself, which passed through Arabic quṭn into the Romance languages before reaching English via Old French coton.
How cottonade is actually used
Now largely historical or specialist textile vocabulary, cottonade appears mainly in discussions of nineteenth-century clothing, workwear, and American Southern trade records. It can be used as an uncountable term for the cloth or in the plural for garments made from it.
Easily confused with cottonade
A colonnade is a row of columns supporting a roof or entablature in architecture, whereas cottonade is a heavy twilled cotton fabric.