Paper, usually printed in ornamental designs, used for covering the interior walls of buildings; paper-hangings.
1784. Belfast Mercury, 27 April, 3/4. He daily expects a fresh Assortment of the most elegant and newest fashioned WALL PAPER, which he will hang on the most reasonable Terms.
1858. Simmonds, Dict. Trade, Wall-paper. See Paper-hangings.
1862. Catal. Internat. Exhib., Brit., II. xxx. 13. Block-printed chintz furniture and wall paper. [Elsewhere usually called ‘paper hangings.’]
1879. Black, Macleod of Dare, xli. That was the guide she turned to—the woman-man, the dabbler in paint-boxes, the critic of carpets and wall-papers.
1883. Harper’s Mag., March, 578/1. Should the new wall-paper be plain or gilded?
1904. Louise Creighton, Life & Lett. M. Creighton, I. 83. He is spoken of as being the first to … introduce the inhabitants of Falmouth to Morris’s wall-papers.
1905. H. G. Wells, Kipps, II. viii. § 3. Revel came last,… politely admiring in a flute-like cultivated voice the mellow wall-paper of the staircase.
So Wall-papering vbl. sb., wall-papers collectively.
1865. Dickens, Mut. Fr., II. ix. A young lady … who was better worth staring at, it occurred to Sloppy, than the best of wall-papering.
