French chalk
- noun
- /frɛntʃ tʃɔk/
- Specialized
:
tiza francesa
- After marking the cloth with French chalk, she carefully cut the pattern out.
Examples
-
To remove grease stains from his suit, he applied some French chalk to the fabric.
-
His waistcoat was creased, there was a button off his glove, and his coat looked as if it was dusty with French chalk.
Fiction book (2001) -
Tailors often use French chalk to mark fabric before cutting it.
Synonyms
291
1.0
A soft stick used for writing or drawing on a board
A thin, flat piece of chalk that people who make clothes use to mark cloth before cutting or sewing
How Soft
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun phrase is compositionally built from the adjective 'French' + noun 'chalk', so a learner who knows both words will readily infer it denotes a kind or variety of chalk (likely white or special). Although the precise material (talc) and its specific tailoring/grease-removal uses are domain-specific, the basic referent 'a type of chalk' is directly derivable from the constituents.
Etymology
French chalk may come from the soft, white powder tailors used to draw on fabric and to lift oily marks. Tailors rubbed the soft chalk to 'mark cloth' or to 'remove grease stains', so the name came to mean the white talc used in sewing and stain removal.