English edit

Etymology edit

From corset +‎ -wear.

Noun edit

corsetwear (uncountable)

  1. Corsets and other clothing that incorporates corsetry.
    • 1915 July 15, The Winnipeg Evening Tribune, volume XXVI, number 166, Winnipeg, Man., page 8:
      One of the season’s best offerings in fine corsets—with just the matter of a few dozen to start with. Some beautiful corsetwear is included in this offering.
    • 1976, Under the Sign of Pisces, page 14:
      "She was 15 years old and on her own in the big city....." working first as a governess and then in corsetwear in a department store before a transfer to their book division.
    • 1991, Lucy Ellmann, Varying Degrees of Hopelessness, Hamish Hamilton, page 28:
      Women used to like themselves more. Before they were assured by feminists that men hate them, women used to prance more. You see them displaying their corsetwear in old magazines. They did not hate themselves. They did not even seem to hate their corsets.
    • 2009, Colleen Denney, Women, Portraiture and the Crisis of Identity in Victorian England: My Lady Scandalous Reconsidered, Ashgate Publishing, →ISBN, page 96:
      Certainly Lady Dilke and Herkomer played up this tradition in the portrayal: her attitude and facial expression, along with her clothing and superior positioning suggest a woman of honor and virtue, one who knows how to conform to proper societal codes of dress that themselves enact honor and virtue, a self contained, controlled and disciplined by corsetwear, which has its own set of codes and meanings.