pattern bookn.adj.
/ˈpatn bʊk/, U.S. /ˈpædərn ˌbʊk/ A. n.
A book designed to contain samples of different patterns of cloth, wallpaper, ceramic designs, etc. Also in extended use.
ΘΚΠ
society > leisure > the arts > visual arts > ornamental art and craft > pattern or design > [noun] > pattern book or card
pattern card1760
pattern book1772
sample card-
the world > relative properties > kind or sort > individual character or quality > an individual case or instance > [noun] > typical or representative case > part as representative of the whole > sample or specimen > a collection of samples
pin paper1673
pattern book1772
pattern card1822
specimen-book1871
sample book1938
swatch-book1956
1772 E. Raffald Directory Manch. & Salford Davenport Charles, Pattern-book-maker.
1774 N. Cresswell Jrnl. 7 Apr. (1925) 9 Spent the evening with Mr. Longsdon, who gave me a pattern Book and desires me to do some business for him.
1797 T. Morton Cure for Heart-ache ii. i. 29 No; as you never went out with the pattern-books.
1821 P. Egan Real Life in London I. vi. 91 And was followed by a servant with pattern-books, the other apparatus of his trade.
1846 R. Ford Gatherings from Spain xxi. 297 Our East end tailors' pattern-book of the last new fashion.
1876 J. Haslem (title) Old Derby China Factory..facsimiles copied from old Derby pattern books.
1922 Hispanic Amer. Hist. Rev. 5 609 Linen, silk, millinery, fancy goods, were bought from samples and pattern-books.
1950 E. H. Gombrich Story of Art x. 141 It was in the thirteenth century that artists did occasionally abandon their pattern book altogether.
1978 M. Cadogan & P. Craig Women & Children First viii. 165 Lorna moves in a world of Women's Institute whist-drives..and Weldon's pattern books.
2000 S. Garfield Mauve 79 Within months, industrial chemists were able to produce quite a pattern book: tiny structural tweaks turned the magenta to aniline yellow, then to bleu de Lyon, bleu de Paris, and Nicholson's blue.
B. adj.
Chiefly hyphenated. Routine, predictable; standard. rare.
ΚΠ
1959 Times 5 Nov. 15/2 Mr. Busch knows his job..but his people are pattern-book and never surprise.
1993 Compass (Toronto, Ont.) May–June 44/2 With a pattern-book prose style, [he] attempts to knit the need for social and ethical responsibility with the yarn of the Victorian epicureanism.
2001 New Jersey Countryside Autumn 85/1 Janet, her husband, James, and their two sons live in what she calls ‘a typical 1896 pattern-book Victorian’.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2005; most recently modified version published online June 2022).
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n.adj.1772