Pronunciations (3)
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/ˈmɪlɪnə/
Pronunciation notes
- Received-Pronunciation
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/ˈmɪlənəɹ/
Pronunciation notes
- General-American
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ˈmɪlɪnɚ
Pronunciation notes
- US
Noun
A person who sells (women's) apparel, accessories, and other decorative goods, especially those originally manufactured in Milan.
Usage- Archaic
- Examples
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He hath ſongs for man, or vvoman, of all ſizes: No Milliner can ſo fit his cuſtomers vvith Gloues: […]
More examples (2)
Hoſt. Here comes my vvife and daughter. / […] / Clovv[n]. She is a pretty lure to dravv cuſtome to your ordinary. / Hoſt. Doſt think I keep her to that purpoſe? / Clovv. VVhen a Dove-houſe is empty, there is cumin-ſeed uſed to purloine from the reſt of the neighbours; […] A Milliner has choice of Monkies, and Paraketoes; […]
[H]e vvill not vviſh to get out of that narrovv, that exceeding narrovv Circle; and, in my Opinion, ſhould keep no Company, but that of Tailors, VVigpuffers, and Milaners.
A person involved in the design, manufacture, or sale of hats for women.
Usage- specifically
- Examples
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More examples (2)
The Milliner muſt be thoroughly verſed in Phyſiognomy; in the Choice of Ribbons ſhe muſt have a particular regard to the Complexion, and muſt ever be mindful to cut the Head-dreſs to the Dimentions of the Face.
The great difficulty generally experienced by amateur milliners in lining bonnets, is mainly attributable to the error of fixing the lining in the first instance to the edge of the bonnet, instead of arranging it previously at the head part.
Milliners, toymen, and jewellers came down from London [to Tunbridge Wells], and opened a bazaar under the trees.
She is at present apprenticed, Miss Mowcher, or articled, or whatever it may be, to Omer and Joram, Haberdashers, Milliners, and so forth, in this town.
More examples (3)
We may, therefore, fairly suppose that the first milliner was probably contemporaneous with the first woman, and that the carpenters who made the ark were not ignorant of the construction of a bandbox.
They went to a musical comedy and nudged each other at the matrimonial jokes and the prohibition jokes; they paraded the lobby, arm in arm, between acts, and in the glee of his first release from the shame which dissevers fathers and sons Ted chuckled, "Dad, did you ever hear the one about the three milliners and the judge?"
In the 1880s, milliners decorated hats with entire stuffed birds.
Verb
To manufacture (women's apparel, specifically hats); also, to supply (someone) with women's apparel, specifically hats.
Usage- Archaic
- Transitive
- Examples
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More examples (8)
We pass over his ridiculous observation […] that Sallust has been "man-millinered by Dr. [Henry] Steuart;" for on what we do not understand we can make no remarks.
In the east, the only "study of mankind, is man." They have no Miss [Maria] Edgeworth, nor any of those millinering cutters-out of human nature into certain patterns of given rules in education.
Oh, if I had but a decent little income, enough to make her tolerably comfortable! For you know she couldn't go on millinering if she was married to me. My mother wouldn't stand that.
Their eyes were very busy—a millinering I should say. The lady in front of us had her book upside down; the two behind us got into a violent quarrel about somebody's bonnet, which one of the two said was new, while the other pretended it was an old one turned.
You will find that my dressmaker, Madame Smith, is to be depended on for work, though she is expensive and dishonest. When we are tired of Wiltstoken, we will go to Paris, and be millinered there; but in the meantime we can resort to Madame Smith.
Out on the lake we began to feel more fully the immensity and the desolation of the place. […] Floating all about us were bergs from the size of a water goblet to the size of the Lusitania, […] We traced features of men and shapes of beasts in them. Some wore preposterous hats, millinered by the sun itself.
Tom's hat should have bitten the bullet and surrendered then and there. The battering it took in the next half-minute was indescribable. Tom twisted and wrung it between his fingers. It had arrived at the house a brand-new hat. It would leave a cheaply millinered corpse.
The crowds of besuited men and millinered women going about their affairs ostensibly as in peacetime and watching the scene cannot remain unaffected by the consequences of what they see.
To adorn or decorate (something).
Usage- Archaic
- Figurative
- Transitive
- Examples
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More examples (1)
We would not have Poesy to be greatly millinered, whatever fashions other ladies may adopt; and when we meet her corseted in the iron framework of the sonnet's rhymes, and crinolined about with the unyielding drapery of its fourteen lines, we feel that she is no doubt elegantly dressed, but we long to see her in any other attire she is wont to put on.
Noun
someone who makes and sells hats
- Broader terms