The Collaborative International Dictionary
Osnaburg \Os"na*burg\, n. A species of coarse linen, originally made in Osnaburg, Germany.
Wiktionary
n. A plain, coarse textile fabric made from flax, tow or jute yarns.
Wikipedia
Osnaburg was a coarse type of plain fabric, named from the archaic English name for the city of Osnabrück, Germany.
Osnaburg fabric may have been first imported into English-speaking countries) from Osnaburg. Originally made from flax yarns, it has also been made from tow or jute yarns, and from flax or tow warp with a mixed or jute weft. The finer and better qualities form a kind of common sheeting, and the various kinds may contain from 20 to 36 threads per inch and 10 to 15 picks per inch.
It began to be woven in Scotland in the later 1730s as an imitation of an imported German fabric that was a coarse lint- or tow-based linen cloth. It quickly became the most important variety in east-central Scotland. Sales quadrupled, from 0.5 million yards in 1747 to 2.2 million yards in 1758. It was exported mainly to England, the Netherlands, and Britain's colonies in America, and some rough fabrics were called osnaburg as late as the twenty first century. In the Atlantic plantation complex, prior to the abolition of slavery, osnaburg was the fabric most often used for slave garments.
In "The Prairie Traveler" (1859) Captain Randolph B. Marcy recommends that every wagon used to cross the plains by settlers "be furnished ... with double osnaburg covers, to protect its contents from the sun and weather."
In the novel S. by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst, there is a description of a sailor "clad neck-to-shin in sailor's osnaburg".
In the novel Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, there is a description of slaves being given garments of osnaburg cloth to wear.
The Spanish word "osnaburgo" is still commonly used in Chile to name a coarsely woven cotton or linen fabric.
Osnaburg is a type of fabric. "Osnaburg" can also refer to the following places:
- Osnaburg, an archaic English name for the city of Osnabrück in Lower Saxony, Germany, for which the fabric is named.
- Osnaburg Township, Stark County, Ohio, a township near Canton, Ohio, in the United States
Osnaburgh can refer to:
- Dairsie, also called Osnaburgh, a village in Fife, Scotland
-
Osnaburgh First Nation, the former name of the Mishkeegogamang First Nation in the Kenora District, Ontario, Canada
- Osnaburgh House, the house for which the first nation was named
- Osnaburgh, Ontario and New Osnaburgh, settlements of the First Nation
Usage examples of "osnaburg".
Those, and the dead-carts that lurched toward the cemeteries with their stiffened cargoes wrapped in cheap Osnaburg sheets and their throbbing armies of attendant flies.
The dead lay along the wall, wrapped roughly in sheets of cheap osnaburg or canvas, the fabric moving with rats.
They dressed in calico in summer and in winter linsey-woolsey, and wore at their work ample aprons of osnaburg, a small checked blue and white cloth.