''calico'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904120411-00-⌔

calico - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

🖼️ ➺ 🖼️ ➺

Noun

calico (countable and uncountable, plural calicos or calicoes)

• (textiles) A kind of rough cloth made from unbleached and not fully processed cotton, often printed with a bright pattern.
  • ✤ This helix was covered with calico, and then a second wire applied in the same manner.¹
  • ✤ Trussed in corsets, jawbone-high collars and calicos that had seen better days, they have little enough to work with, their attempts at coquetry further constrained by their rigid mores of the day.²
• (countable) Ellipsis of calico cat.
  • ✤ One of them, a calico whose half-grown kittens he just fed, slow-blinks at him, an affectionate gesture.³
• (countable) Ellipsis of calico grouper.
• (uncountable, botany) The plant disease caused by Tobacco mosaic virus.

Adjective

calico (not comparable)

• Made of calico or resembling the color of calico cloth, having a pattern of red and contrasting areas; variegated.
  • ✤ Synonym: tortoiseshell
  • ✤ The calico cat had distinctive red and dark markings.
  • ✤ The calico-patterned tablecloths were supposed to make the restaurant look rustic; instead, they made it look run down.
  • ✤ Sara, oh Sara/Scorpio Sphinx in a calico dress⁴
  • Having red, brunette, and blond hair colors, resembling the fur of a calico cat.

Etymology

From Calicut, from where the cloth was originally exported, from Malayalam കോഴിക്കോട് (kōḻikkōṭŭ, “Kozhikode”), from കോഴി (kōḻi, “palace”) +‎ കോട് (kōṭŭ, “fortified palace”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈkæ.lɪ.kəʊ/
• (General American) IPA: /ˈkæ.lɪ.koʊ/
• Audio (Southern England): 🔊

Printed 2026-09-04.

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Footnotes

1. 1832, Michael Faraday, “Experimental Researches in Electricity”, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, volume 122, →DOI, →JSTOR, page 126: ↩

2. 2017 June 30, Ruth La Ferla, “In ‘The Beguiled,’ Pretty Confections Whipped Up to Seduce”, in The New York Times ‎${}^{[1]}$, →ISSN: ↩

3. 2022, N. K. Jemisin, The World We Make, Orbit, page 111: ↩

4. 1976, Bob Dylan, “Sara”, in Desire: ↩