frock-coat

frock-coat (plural frock-coats)

1. Alternative form of frock coat.
   • 1863, [Arthur Lyon] Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States: April-June 1863, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, page 156:

     Most of the officers were dressed in uniform which is neat and serviceable—viz., a bluish-grey frock-coat of a colour similar to Austrian yagers.

   • 1864 July, George Augustus Sala, “[The Streets of the World.] Liverpool: Church Street.”, in Temple Bar: A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers, volume XI, London: Office of “Temple Bar,” […]. Ward and Lock, […]. New York: Willmer and Rogers, page 484:

     They delight in blue frock-coats and grass-green Newmarkets, and white hats with mourning-bands.

   • 1872 September – 1873 July, Thomas Hardy, “‘We frolic while ’Tis May’”, in A Pair of Blue Eyes. […], volume II, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], published 1873, →OCLC, page 20:

     First, an irrepressible wrinkle or two in the waist of his frock-coat—denoting that he had not damned his tailor sufficiently to drive that tradesman up to the orthodox high pressure of cunning workmanship.

   • 1892, Hilarion [pseudonym; Campbell McKellar], “Judy on Society”, in A Jersey Witch, London: Eden, Remington & Co […], page 87:

     A lot of young men in long frock-coats glued to the door-posts, so limp, poor things, and all the women drinking tea by themselves and longing for the young men.

   • 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 200, column 1:

     From behind that structure came out an impression of pale plumpness in a frock-coat.

   • 1895, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, chapter X, in The Stark Munro Letters: […], London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 215:

     So there, my dear Bertie, was I, within a few hours of my entrance into this town, with my top-hat down to my ears, my highly professional frock-coat, and my kid gloves, fighting some low bruiser on a pedestal in one of the most public places, in the heart of a yelling and hostile mob!

   • 1908, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “How I Became a London Student and Went Astray”, in Tono-Bungay […], Toronto, Ont.: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Ltd., →OCLC, 2nd book (The Rise of Tono-Bungay), section V, page 138:

     He was a large, loose, fattish man with unintelligent brown eyes magnified by spectacles; he wore an ill-fitting frock-coat and a paper collar, and he showed me, as his great treasure and interest, a large Bible which he had grangerised with photographs of pictures.

   • 1967, The Illustrated London News, page 28, column 1:

     i remember some years ago, in a New York paper, an extraordinary full-page picture of the funeral in Brooklyn of a murdered Hasidic Jewish child: a scene which might have come straight from Old Russia, with kerchieved women wailing in the street and bearded men in the long frock-coats and wide-brimmed black hats of the sect.