[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. To work or embroider in a tambour-frame; to ornament with tambour-work.
1774. Westm. Mag., II. 166. The waistcoats tamboured with coloured silks only, or interspersed with gold and silver.
1840. Mrs. Gaugain, Lady’s Assist. Knitting, etc., I. 189. Join it up … by tambouring it together about 21/2 inches at each side, and draw it up at each end.
1885. Birmingham Daily Post, 5 Jan., 6/6. Some [fabrics] are embossed, and some tamboured in gold, or otherwise treated.
fig. 1830. Blackw. Mag., XXVII. 171. A coarse … web of words …—tamboured with clusters of fantastic figures.
2. intr. To work at a tambour-frame; to do tambour-work.
1774. Monthly Rev., LI. Aug., 108. Instead of tambouring waistcoats, they [Anglo-Saxon women] embroidered standards for their heroes.
a. 1845. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Ser. III. Knight & Lady. She sat herring-boning, tambouring, or stitching.
1863. Janet Hamilton, Poems, Tambourer. She who tambours, tambours, tambours for fifteen hours a day Would have shoes on her feet and dress for church, had she a third of our pay.
Hence Tamboured ppl. a., ornamented with tambour-embroidery; worked, as a design, on the tambour-frame.
1799. Hull Advertiser, 30 Nov., 1/1. Some remarkably elegant … tamboured … muslins.
1830. Scott, Demonol., i. 30. This personage, with tamboured waistcoat.
1885. Manch. Exam., 2 March, 4/6. Business … in tamboured cloths for Spain is also dull.
