In article <[email protected]>, Cap'n John <[email protected]> wrote: > "minikins" > "linen chuke" <OED>2: MINIKIN [Origin unknown. Perh. a sense development of MINIKIN n.1, or perh. (like MINIKIN n.2) < Miniken, obsolete form of the name of Munich, as being associated with this city (although there is no evidence for such an association).] A. n. Chiefly in pl. A type of plain-weave worsted baize used to make clothing in the 16th and 17th centuries. Now hist. 1594 in R. H. Tawney & E. Power Tudor Domest. Documents i. 221 There is another sort of Baies made at Coxall, Maidstone and some other places, which they call minikins. 1609 Rates Marchandizes sig. C2v, Bayes called Minikins or Freezadoes. 1627-8 in A. P. Wadsworth & J. De Lacy Mann Cotton Trade & Industr. Lancs. i. 13 There had been made ‘whyte Kersays’ and ‘Ruggs and Minikins’, ‘ruggs’ being a ‘snagged Fryse’, and minikins ‘Cottons thinner and lesse milled than the other’. 1931 A. P. WADSWORTH & J. DE LACY MANN Cotton Trade & Industr. Lancs. 13 Minikins were a kind of bay, and in 1594 had been made at Maidstone and a Coggeshall and other places in Essex; they were like ‘short Suffolk clothes, saving they are listed and cottoned lyke unto a Baie’. 1974 Victorian Hist. Kent III. 405 A cloth called manikins was made at Maidstone in 1563, ‘in length and breadth equal to short Suffolk cloth, save that they were afted and cottoned like bays’. B. adj. Designating or made from minikins. Obs. 1604 Lismore Papers (1887) 2nd Ser. I. 108, Vij yeards halfe of minikin bayste to make ye same gowne. 1616 F. BEAUMONT & J. FLETCHER Scornful Ladie I. sig. C2, Steward this is as plaine as your olde minikin breeches. 1721 C. KING Brit. Merchant II. 306 Bays (Double or Minikin) by the same Tariff. ********** From a number of web sites: CHUKE A hat, often knitted, usually with a tassel. -- Regards, Frank Young [email protected] 703-527-7684 Post Office Box 2793, Kensington, Maryland 20891 "Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate... Nunc cognosco ex parte"