buckram

• IPA^(key): /ˈbʌkɹəm/

From Middle English bukeram (“fine linen”), from Anglo-Norman bokeram, from Old French boquerant, bougherant (“fine cloth”), bougueran, probably ultimately from Bokhara, a city in southeastern Uzbekistan.

buckram (usually uncountable, plural buckrams)

1. A coarse cloth of cotton, linen or hemp, stiffened with size or glue, used in bookbinding to cover and protect the books, in garments to keep them in the form intended, and for wrappers to cover merchandise.
   • c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iv]:

     Four rogues in buckram let drive at me—

   • 1882, James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, volume 4, page 557:

     Buckram was probably from the first a stiffened material employed for lining, often dyed.

2. A crab that has just molted; a papershell.

buckram (third-person singular simple present buckrams, present participle buckraming, simple past and past participle buckramed or buckrammed)

1. (transitive) To stiffen with or as if with buckram.

Perhaps a back-formation from earlier buckrams, from buck +‎ ramps, ramsh (“wild garlic, ramson”). Compare Danish ramsløg (“ramson”), Swedish ramslök (“bear garlic, ramson”).

• buckrams

buckram (plural buckrams)

1. A plant, Allium ursinum, also called ramson, wild garlic, or bear garlic.

• ramp