(no subject)

[yuuago]

If I say the word "housecoat", do you know what I mean?


What comes to mind for me: a thick, heavy, robe-style garment. Could be terrycloth, but more likely to be thick flannel or polyester fleece. Must be long. It does serve the function of a bathrobe (put on after getting out of the shower) but is also (primarily?) worn over pajamas in general, both for comfort and to keep warm. Absolutely not worn over regular clothes.

And it should be written (and spoken) as a compound - "housecoat". If separated, with a space - "house coat" - that brings to mind something more like a smoking jacket.


I was writing something that used the word today, and realized that I almost never see it written down - neither in fiction nor in commercial context. Starting to think it might be another regionalism that I didn't realise was a regionalism.

(A quick search as I write this confirms it probably is a regionalism. There we go.)

Sometimes I do wonder if the regional vocabulary in the stuff I write gets people confused, but... well, I very rarely write characters who would actually be speaking English, so it doesn't really matter which form of English I use. Best to just do whatever pleases me and make the narration aggressively Canadian.

Comments

[nanslice]

I'm from the southern US and my mom uses the word housecoat and it fits your description. :3 Very cozy.

[yuuago]

Cozy indeed!
Interesting that your mom uses it (I wonder if it's partially a generational thing in some places).

[monksandbones]

I would use housecoat to describe what you're describing, which my mostly East-coast American friends would call a bathrobe. But of course I'm from western Canada too!

The only difference is that I would 100% wear it over my regular clothes as well as my pyjamas, but that might just be a me thing.

[yuuago]

Could be a you thing, or the "must NOT wear over regular clothes" might be a me thing... ;)

[hokuton_punch]

come to think of it, I'm not sure I've heard people use the word as such, but it sounded familiar when I read it and your description fits what I vaguely pictured... Wonder where I picked it up from!

[yuuago]

HMM. I wonder if it's one of those terms that used to be used more frequently but isn't so much any more. :Va

[minutia_r]

I'm familiar with it, mostly as something Jewish women a generation or two older than me would wear while spending summer in the Catskill mountains.

[yuuago]

That's very specific!

[minutia_r]

It just so happened that I had an errand to run in a haredi neighborhood today and I saw a display of the type of housecoats I mean, so there are still communities where they're commonly being worn:

[yuuago]

Oh, those! My mom has some that are kind of similar. :O Though we call those a nightgown, haaa.

[ranunculus]

Stopping as I go past to comment: housecoat to me is a robe like garment that has a certain sleeze factor. I think more of a light garment perhaps polyester print, that someone in a tatty apartment or run down trailer park might be wearing, when she answers the door at 1pm, holding a cigarette in one hand. I'm in California.

[yuuago]

Hi!
That's an interesting association. Funnily, I think "bathrobe" has a more sleezy connotation to me (it's what I'd use in the situation you're describing).

[ranunculus]

That is really interesting. Yes, in my world, bathrobe can be used pejoratively: she (hmmm, universally she) was still in her bathrobe to indicate someone who is lazy- but not necessarily sleezy.

[straightforwardly]

I feel like I've seen it in older novels by non-American writers; it's not a word that's immediately familiar to me, but I had an immediate mental association with the above and after a moment's thought I had a feel for what it actually meant.

[yuuago]

Interesting! I wonder if it's an outdated British term. :Va

[torachan]

It's a word I've seen but only in books. I think the only books I've seen it in have been older, so I just assumed it was an older word rather than regional.

[yuuago]

Thanks for the data point! :)

[kanadka]

Checking in as another aggressively Canadian data point, in case you were wondering if it was regional to AB/western Canada, we use housecoat exactly like that in ON (and my extended family's maritime so I don't think anyone would've like brought it over from the prairies, say). If it's more luxurious like it's made of satin, then you could call it a robe or a lounge robe, but terry cloth / fleece / the particular style of the sort of rounded lapels and the cross-over belted, goes about to your knees, yep, that's a housecoat eh. :D

I also wouldn't wear it over regular clothes, unless my regular clothes are extremely tight like yoga pants and a camisole, say, in which case, it's serving the same purpose as basically a sweater with tails.

[yuuago]

Aha, so definitely not a western-specific one, then!

Re: clothes. Even if the housecoat's thrown over very tight/casual clothes, for me the thought of it is like... "It's not properly clean and you look like a slug, what if somebody shows up and they will SEE you and know that you're the kind of person who goes around in pajama-adjacent clothing all day, THE HORROR, it's only remotely acceptable if you're ill." (Thanks, ma, for passing on this neuroris...)

[rusakko]

Not sure if this is of any use use to you, but as a Finnish-speaker, what comes to mind is a sort of loose-fitting dress that buttons up in the front. I believe women in Finland (and possibly Estonia?) used to wear them over their "nice" clothes when doing housework. Something like this: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NkkVd0L1s1A/TLC6dITih9I/AAAAAAAABUo/7W6aMMYg2VI/s280/019.JPG


It's called "kotitakki", which would literally translate to "home coat". Although when I googled it, I also got results for bathrobes, so maybe the North American "housecoat" is slipping into Finnish too. :D

[yuuago]

That sounds really interesting! I think I've seen something similar in very old-fashioned English contexts.

(It's nice to hear from you!! <3 <3)

[foxinthestars]

I'm from the lower-midwestern-US and I also recognize this. To me, a housecoat is usually a light-to-medium fabric, usually fastens down the front, and is like a cross between a bathrobe and a dedicated nightgown for puttering around the house in your nightgown during the day.

[yuuago]

Thanks for the data point! :D

[kiraly]

Oh it's fun reading all the comments here - I'm familiar with the word but have never heard it used in real life, I suspect it's something I picked up from reading. I do associate it as being sort of an "old-fashioned" word for a bathrobe.

[yuuago]

<3

The "old-fashioned" note really intrigues me... Never would have imagined it as old-timey rather than just Commonwealth in general, but here we are!