Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🧥 A work garment 🪡 To sew patterns
to smock

to smock

1 9.0
To sew small stitches that gather fabric into a pattern
  • verb
  • /smɑk/
  • Specialized
translation icon : fruncir
  • I had signed up for a class at the Smocking Bird, thinking I would smock dresses for Debbie's two-year-old twins for Christmas.
  • smocked dress
  • white-smocked
  • green-smocked

Examples

  • Another one I want to do is smocking.

    Blog text (2)

  • A hand smocks the side of it.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • Clemmie was sitting with them on the balcony, smocking a pinafore for a grandbaby.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • She decided to smock the fabric using colorful threads to create a beautiful design.

  • After watching a tutorial online, he felt confident enough to smock his daughter's dress.

  • The new sewing machine made it easier to smock the fabric quickly and accurately.

Synonyms

shirred
vsto smock
  • Specialized
8.3

Fabric gathered with rows of small stitches to make a stretchy, decorative effect

decorates fabric with intersecting diagonal stitches to form patterned gathers

Compounds

lady's smock
9.6

A small wildflower with pale purple or white flowers that grows in damp grassy fields

How Decorative

to smock
  • Specialized
1 9.0
to embroider
32 4.2
to decorate
226 1.9
to gather
  • Specialized
36 6.1

Surface Forms

smock infinitive
smocked past
smocked past participle
smocking present participle
smocks third person singular

Etymology

Smock as a verb comes from the name of the garment and means to sew many small gathers or stitches into cloth to make a decorative, gathered pattern. So to smock a sleeve is to decorate it by pulling the fabric into neat little folds with thread.