Laundry

Also 6 landerie, -y, 8 landry. [Altered form of LAVENDRY after LAUNDER.]

  † 1.  The action or process of washing. Obs.

a. 1530.  Heywood, Play Weather (Brandl), 896. Excepte the sonne shyne that our clothes may dry, We can do ryght nought in our laundry. Ibid., 1100. Then came there a nother that lyueth by laundry.

c. 1611.  Chapman, Iliad, XXII. 135. Where Trojan wives and their fair daughters had Laundry for their fine linen weeds.

1626.  Bacon, Sylva, § 394. Chalkie Water is too fretting As it appeareth in Laundry of Clothes, which wear out apace, if you use such Water.

  2.  An apartment or establishment, where linen, etc., is washed and ‘got up.’

1577.  B. Googe, Heresbach’s Husb. (1586), 13. Hyther also runnes the water from the Laundry to moist it the better.

1648.  Mayne, Amorous War, II. iv.

1715.  Leoni, Palladio’s Archit. (1742), I. 51. The Wood-house, the Landry, and a pretty fine Garden.

1798.  Canning, Elegy, ii. in Anti-Jacobin, 14 May (1852), 132. No story half so shocking By kitchen fire or laundry.

1807.  Crabbe, Par. Reg., II. 89. Fair Lucy first, the laundry’s grace and pride.

1851.  Illustr. Catal. Gt. Exhib., 194. Sample of refined Indian blue, for the laundry.

  ¶ 3.  Used blunderingly for LAUNDRESS.

1598.  Shaks., Merry W., I. ii. 5. There dwels one Mistris Quickly, which is in the manner of his Nurse, or his dry Nurse, or his Cooke, or his Laundry.

  4.  attrib., as laundry-battledore, -blue, -blue-bag, † -house, -maid, -man, -woman.

a. 1668.  Davenant, Play-ho. to Let, Wks. (1673), 77. We’ll make ’em bring Their *Laundry Battledores.

1899.  Westm. Gaz., 8 Aug., 6/1. Large supplies of … *laundry blue.

1880.  Plain Hints Needlework, 33. Run a tape through the holes, and it will make a *‘Laundry Blue-bag.’

1585.  Wills & Inv. N. C. (Surtees, 1860), II. 108. To euerie of the maides of the *landerie house 2s. 6d.

1632.  B. Jonson, Magn. Lady, IV. i. I will … cry it through … every office of the *laundry-maids.

1855.  Mrs. Gaskell, North & S., ix. She was no longer Peggy the laundry-maid, but Margaret Hale, the lady.

1708.  J. Chamberlayne, St. Gt. Brit., II. III. List xlix. (1743), 162. The Matron is to take care of the Men’s Linnen … & deliver it to the *Laundryman once a week.

1883.  Stevenson, Silverado Sq., 14. There are the blacksmith’s,… and Kong Sam Kee, the Chinese laundryman’s.

1863.  Fr. A. Kemble, Resid. in Georgia, 24. The eldest son of our *laundry-woman.