A worsted fabric or yarn with a napped surface, used in textile manufacturing.
Likely a variant or dialectal form related to 'nap' (the raised fibers on fabric), possibly combining French or Flemish influences with English textile terminology from the 17th-18th centuries.
This obscure fabric term survived in English textile jargon even as the material fell out of fashion—it's a ghost word that lives on mainly in unabridged dictionaries and historical weaving manuals.
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