piece goods
1
6.7
- noun
- Specialized
:
telas
- He purchased piece goods to create custom drapes for his living room.
Examples
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The store specializes in piece goods and offers a wide variety of fabrics for clothing and home decor.
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His father's in piece goods.
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When she visited the fabric shop, she found several rolls of piece goods in vibrant colors and patterns.
Synonyms
Cloth sold in lengths, usually measured in yards, for sewing and crafts
Surface Forms
Morphology
The components 'piece' (a portion) and 'goods' (products) make it fairly clear that this refers to products sold as pieces or lengths rather than finished items, so a learner can infer a general sense. However, the specific, industry-oriented meaning — fabrics/textiles sold by the yard or meter — is a domain-specific extension that is not fully predictable from the parts alone, so the precise textile sense may not be obvious to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Piece goods comes from market days when cloth was sold in long pieces rather than as ready-made clothes. People bought these pieces of goods by the yard to cut and sew, so the term now means 'fabrics sold in lengths'.