calico Meaning, Definition & Usage

noun coarse cloth with a bright print
adjective made of calico or resembling calico in being patterned
- calico dresses
- a calico cat
adjective satellite having sections or patches colored differently and usually brightly
painted; multi-coloured; varicoloured; multicolour; varicolored; motley; pied; particolored; multi-color; multicolored; multicoloured; multicolor; particoloured; piebald; multi-colored; multi-colour.
- a jester dressed in motley
- the painted desert
- a particolored dress
- a piebald horse
- pied daisies

So called because first imported from Calicut, in the East Indies: cf. F. calicot.

plural Calicoes

Plain white cloth made from cotton, but which receives distinctive names according to quality and use, as, super calicoes, shirting calicoes, unbleached calicoes, etc. Eng.
The importation of printed or stained colicoes appears to have been coeval with the establishment of the East India Company. Beck (Draper's Dict. ).
Cotton cloth printed with a figured pattern. ✍ In the United States the term calico is applied only to the printed fabric.

Made of, or having the apperance of, calico; -- often applied to an animal, as a horse or cat, on whose body are large patches of a color strikingly different from its main color. Colloq. U. S.