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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
oilcloth
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A round table covered in cracked oilcloth stood bare of bowls, jugs, cups and saucers.
▪ A slick green oilcloth of mold was rotting the wood beneath.
▪ He spread an oilcloth on the table then laid the big cutting board on top of it.
▪ I felt about on the oilcloth that covered the kitchen table.
▪ Looking down, she saw an oilcloth suit and rough hands.
▪ Quickly, before she could undo the decision, Kathy stowed her tackle box and oilcloth.
▪ The airline bag went into the back of it, covered with a square of oilcloth.
▪ The telly faded, the shoddy oilcloth vanished, the beautiful sunshine we were missing was forgotten.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
oilcloth

oilcloth \oil"cloth`\, n. Cloth rendered waterproof by treatment with oil or paint, and used for marking garments, covering tables, shelves, floors, etc.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
oilcloth

1690s, "cotton or a similar fabric waterproofed with oil," from oil (n.) + cloth. In reference to an oil-treated canvas used as a cheap floor covering, 1796.

Wiktionary
oilcloth

n. A fabric or cloth treated on one side with a waterproof covering, especially one made from linseed oil etc.; used for flooring, tablecloths, kitchen shelves and sometimes furniture covering.

WordNet
oilcloth

n. cloth treated on one side with a drying oil or synthetic resin

Wikipedia
Oilcloth

Oilcloth, also known as enameled cloth or (in England) American cloth, was close-woven cotton duck or linen cloth with a coating of boiled linseed oil to make it waterproof. Historically, pre- Mackintosh, oilcloth was one of very few flexible, waterproof materials that were widely available. Leather was expensive—very expensive in large pieces—and required regular maintenance if often wetted. Oilcloth was used as an outer waterproof layer for luggage, both wooden trunks and flexible satchels, for carriages and for weatherproof clothing.

Usage examples of "oilcloth".

Instead of the bare glaring, blindless, western sitting-room, with its horrible blue walls and aggressive oilcloth, in which there was certainly not one square inch on which the eye could rest without being affronted, we now had a sweet--smelling, cosy little parlour, the walls of their soft native brown, shaded from the sun, and into which penetrated every cool south-eastern breath that blew.

I am like oilcloth, along which everything of this sort elides without penetrating.

This last opinion was strengthened by the shabby gentleman with the red nose and oilcloth hat, and whom I strongly suspected of being a lineal descendant from the variant Bardolph.

An oilcloth had been sewn around the strong box to protect it from the weather, or rather to protect the fate of Spain that lay hidden inside.

He sighed as Evans held out the oilcloth scrap, lifted his snifter and tossed back the brandy, then held his hand out for the paper.

As soon as its contents had been arranged as attractively as possible on the clean white marbled oilcloth with which the stand was covered, and the coffee made and ready to serve, Theo handed Jimmy two dollars in dimes, nickels and pennies, to make change, and set off with the box of paste in his pocket, and the roll of rags under his arm.

She has tacked brightly patterned oilcloth to the shelves and put on rickrack as an edging.

Knulp reached into the inside pocket of his almost new suit and took out his roadbook, neatly enfolded in an oilcloth case.

All the time when I was in their house, I kept on thinking that somewhere under the floorboards a corpse had been hidden, perhaps by his father, and covered with oilcloth, like the Moscow one, and surrounded with bowls of Zhdanov water.

He had filled one part of the bag with cartridges, oilcloth and balsam, and in the other had put a loaf of bread, a soft cheese and a bottle of wine.

The inside was bare and bright as a gymnasium, containing a dozen mismatched tables with orange oilcloth thumbtacked onto them.

He wrapped them first in old woolen blankets, then in oilcloth, and calked the seams with pitch or tar or wax.

Somehow, I had the presence of mind to replace the body as I had found it, cover it with the oilcloth, close the door, and climb up out of that charnel pit into the land of the living .

Somehow, I had the presence of mind to replace the body as I had found it, cover it with the oilcloth, close the door, and climb up out of that charnel pit into the land of the living.

The novelist describes complete neighborhoods “fathered by mud and chemical waste, with roofs of plastic basins, doors from old rugs, oilcloth windows and walls of wet breezeblocks.