A coarse and cheap material used for clothing by countrymen. The N.E.D. gives GEANES, 1577.
1743. “Fustian Dimothys, Jeans, &c.,” advertised: Boston Weekly Messenger, Aug. 22.
1786. An Assortment of Goods, consisting of Jeans; jeanets; satinets; &c., advertised: Maryland Journal, April 14.
1786. Fustians; jeans; thicksets; denims; &c.—Id., May 23.
1787. Had on a striped waistcoat, jean breeches, thread stockings, &c.—Runaway advt., id., Sept. 21.
1788. A spinning machine of 80 spindles, drawing cotton suitable for fine jeans or federal rib. [Philadelphia Federal Procession.]—Id., July 15.
1835. Pantaloons of Kentucky jean, and a broad brimmed white hat, brogans and a blanket coat.—Ingraham, ‘The South-West,’ ii. 175.
1847. A gentleman in a Kentucky jeans coat and a white hat nearly started from the sidewalk when he met me.—Solomon Smith, ‘Theatrical Apprenticeship,’ p. 47.
1848. Picture to yourself a lean, rawboned specimen of humanity, some six feet seven or eight, without his shoes, loosely surrounded by a well-worn suit of “Kentucky jeans.”—Yale Lit. Mag., xiii. 230 (March).
1855. We met half a dozen evidently “up-country” youths, and so very green, that they had not yet shed their “Kentucky jeans.”—S. A. Hammett (‘Philip Paxton’), ‘Captain Priest,’ p. 60.
1856. An elderly gentleman, with a weather-beaten face, clad with a suit of jeans, arose and came forward.—Knick. Mag., xlviii. 103 (July).
1861. His wife, a round-faced damsel, black as the ace of spades, in a full dress of blue jeans, came up.—Id., lvii. 623 (June).
a. 1870. James Douglas Williams (1808–80), governor of Indiana (1876), a well-known stump speaker, acquired popularity among the farmers by wearing blue-jeans “inexpressibles”: from which circumstance he was called “Blue-Jeans Williams.”
