doily

English

lace doily (sense 1)

Alternative forms

• doyley, doiley

Etymology

From Doiley, the name of a 17th-century London draper. The surname is Anglo-Norman, from d’Œuilly, name of several places in Calvados, from Old French oeil (“eye”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈdɔɪli/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Noun

doily (plural doilies)

1. A small ornamental piece of lace or linen or paper used to protect a surface from scratches by hard objects such as vases or bowls; or to decorate a plate of food.
   • 1920, Sinclair Lewis, Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, →OCLC:

     She looked polite, and observed the oiled floors, hard-wood staircase, unused fireplace with tiles which resembled brown linoleum, cut-glass vases standing upon doilies, and the barred, shut, forbidding unit bookcases that were half filled with swashbuckler novels and unread-looking sets of Dickens, Kipling, O. Henry, and Elbert Hubbard.

   • 1956, John Betjeman, “How to Get On in Society”, in Nancy Mitford, editor, Noblesse Oblige, page 159:

     Beg pardon, I'm soiling the doileys / With afternoon tea-cakes and scones.

2. (Judaism) A similar circular piece of lace worn as a head-covering by some married Jewish women.
3. (obsolete) An old kind of woollen material.

Translations

ornamental piece

• Bulgarian: салфетка f (salfetka)
• Czech: rozetka f, (ozdobný (cs)) ubrousek (cs) m, dečka (cs) f
• Dutch: onderlegger (nl) m
• Esperanto: please add this translation if you can
• Finnish: alusliina; kakkupaperi (fi)
• French: napperon (fr) m
• Galician: blonda (gl) f
• German: Deckchen (de) n
• Greek: πετσετάκι (el) n (petsetáki), σεμεδάκι (el) n (semedáki)
• Italian: centrino (it) m
• Japanese: please add this translation if you can
• Plautdietsch: Dakjskje n
• Polish: serwetka (pl) f
• Russian: салфе́тка (ru) f (salfétka)
• Spanish: tapete (es) m
• Swedish: tårtpapper (sv) n, spetsduk c

Further reading

• doily on Wikipedia.Wikipedia