[f. STAY sb.2] A staylace, often used by tailors, etc., as a binding to a fabric. † Also slang (see quot. 1785).
1698. E. Ward, Lond. Spy, IV. (1706), 91. To find Canvas, Stay-Tape, and Buckram in a Taylors Bill.
1709. [W. King], Usef. Trans. Philos., Jan. & Feb., 24. I discours’d to him of the Nature … of Staytape, Stifning, and Grogram.
1785. Grose, Dict. Vulgar T., Staytape, a taylor; from that article and its coadjutor buckram, which makes no small figure in the bills of those knights of the needle.
1801. trans. Gabrielli’s Mysterious Husb., II. 72. The coat alone had cost upwards of eight-and-twenty shillings, what with stay-tape, and buckram, and the other et cæteras.
1817. Coleridge, Biog. Lit., II. xxi. 130. The pin-papers, and stay-tapes, which might have been among the wares of his pack.
1882. Caulfeild & Saward, Dict. Needlework, 461. Stay Tape … is more properly called Stay Binding.
