nightcloth

From night +‎ cloth.

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nightcloth (plural nightcloths)

1. A cloth placed over a birdcage, used to simulate the darkness of night and settle the bird(s) into sleep.
   • 1976, Jack Foxx [pseudonym; Bill Pronzini], Freebooty: A Novel of Suspense, Indianapolis, Ind., New York, N.Y.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., →ISBN, pages 69–70:

     When the O’Haras were ten paces away, the bird suddenly swooped off the miner’s shoulder—the miner took no notice—and flew to a table on top of which reposed an elegant metal cage with a frilly nightcloth rolled up at the top. […] The fat woman rolled the nightcloth down over the cage and its nearly raped cockatoo and stalked off with it in high outrage.

   • 1993, Carol Anne O’Marie, Murder Makes a Pilgrimage, Delacorte Press, →ISBN, page 201:

     Quiet settled over the manager’s office like the night[-]cloth over Sister Angela’s canary cage, leaving each one to brood on his or her own thoughts.

   • 1997, Anne K. Rose, “The Waltz”, in Double Vision: Twelve Stories, Madison, Conn.: Psychosocial Press, →ISBN, page 63:

     Though it is midday the apartment is dark, the nightcloth is on the birdcage still.

   • 1997, Epoch, volume 48, page 174:

     She tells me about the serving girl she had to scold for failing to remove the nightcloth from the songbirds’ cage (You see, I can be useful to you when you’re gone, she exclaims with a teasing smile and plucks a fishbone from my beard) and I provide her a fictitious account of my luncheon visit to a neighboring castellan to discuss proposed changes in the game laws.

   • 2001, Ethan Coen, “My Dream and What I Make of It”, in The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way, New York, N.Y.: Crown Publishers, →ISBN, page 34:

     In my dream last night I was a toucan / With a nose that was hard as a shell, / So I rapped knuckles on it, / Cracked walnuts upon it, / And cashews and filberts as well. / Yes, I cracked open walnuts upon it, / And used it to bang at my bell. / Yes, I ate walnut meat / While my two toucan feet / Took turns standing. The nightcloth then fell.

2. (rare) A nightgown.
   • 1890, The Manuscripts of S. H. Le Fleming, Esq., of Rydal Hall (Historical Manuscripts Commission. Twelfth Report, Appendix, Part VII.), London: […] [F]or Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, by Eyre and Spottiswoode, […], page 138:

     (1895.) July 1, 1677.—Lady Mary Fletcher to her niece, Katherine Fleming. Pray tell your father that I omitted two suits of ribbon, a laced apron, and laced nightcloth, and a fan, all of which are necessaries as well as the smocks of which I said nothing.

   • 1978, Carl Allenbaugh, Coins: Questions and Answers, 3rd edition, Iola, Wis.: Krause Publications, →ISBN, page 42:

     The public was particularly unappreciative of the 1808-1814 Classic Head type which presented “a sleepy-looking Liberty turbaned with a diaphanous nightcloth,” and promptly dubbed her the “Blowsy Barmaid.”

   • 1989, Rolland E. Wolfe, “The Accurate Easter Reporters”, in How the Easter Story Grew from Gospel to Gospel, Lewiston, N.Y., Queenston, Ont.: The Edwin Mellen Press, →ISBN, page 13:

     Witout^[sic] taking time to dress, and with only a nightcloth around himself, this young lad appears to have rushed out of the city and across the Kidron Valley to the garden. […] When the arresting party grabbed this youth, he slipped out of the nightcloth and fled naked to his home within the walled city of Jerusalem.

   • 1992, Jim Crace, Arcadia, New York, N.Y.: Atheneum, →ISBN, pages 114 and 128:

     She dressed him in a pair of knee-length trousers and a jacket, no underclothes, no shoes, and put on her own coat and hat above her nightcloth. […] His fingers—adept in crowds at unloosening, unfastening, unbuttoning—were trembling at the strings of the nightcloth which she still wore beneath her coat. […] One hand pulled her heavy coat and nightcloth to her waist; his other hand was pushed too tightly—and was trapped—beneath his trouser band, beneath his underclothes.

• nightclothes