pinking

1. 1
   noununcountable

   Decorative work produced by cutting small holes or scalloped edges into fabric or leather.

   The tailor finished the hem with delicate pinking to keep it from fraying.

   Fine pinking ran along the edges of the embroidered gloves.

   Similarscalloping

   Note

   A noun that readily takes a plural when it means individual pieces of ornament. Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) groups "rufflings, and pinkings, and patchings" as the trimmings of fine dress, which the speaker fears will make the family hated by the neighbors' wives. Pinkings and similar plurals name the separate trimmings, while the singular names the work as a whole.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of pink.

   The seamstress is pinking the hem to give it a decorative edge.

   Pinking the fabric edges keeps the woven threads from unraveling.

   Note

   The participle serves several very different verbs that share one spelling. It can describe color, as a sky pinking at dawn or a topaz pinked by heat, but it also covers cutting decorative holes in cloth, pricking with a sword, and wounding someone with ridicule. Only the color sense of becoming pink stands without an object. In the needlework sense the gerund shades into the decorative work itself.

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