Plate No. 118fabric
The thick, coarse, napped woolen of the toggle coat.
- First documented
- 1600s
- Origin
- Duffel, Antwerp, Belgium
- Fiber
- wool
- Weave
- thick coarse napped woolen
- Family
- twills
Plate No. 118 · fabric
Duffel
Duffel is a thick, heavy, coarse woolen with a soft raised nap, named for the town of Duffel near Antwerp where it was made from the 1600s. Its warmth and weather resistance made it a working and military cloth, and it gave its name to two enduring objects: the duffel coat, the hooded toggle-and-rope coat issued to the Royal Navy and made famous by Field Marshal Montgomery, and the duffel bag, the cylindrical sack first sewn from the same cloth. The fabric is the rare case of a town's name surviving in everyday English through the goods it once shipped.
Named for
Named for Duffel, the Flemish town near Antwerp where the cloth was first made.
Sources & References
- 1.Duffel cloth, Wikipedia
- 2.Duffel, Belgium, Wikipedia
- 3.duffel (etymology), Etymonline