jabot

Borrowed from French jabot.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈʒæ.bəʊ/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æbəʊ

jabot (plural jabots)

1. A cascading or ornamental frill down the front of a blouse, shirt, etc.
   • 1944, Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake, Penguin, published 2011, page 136:

     She was wearing tan today, with a ruffled jabot at her throat.

   • 1963, Anthony Burgess, Inside Mr Enderby:

     She was a dream of winter bourgeois elegance: little black town suit with tiny white jabot of lace-froth; pencil skirt; three-quarter-length coat with lynx collar; long green gloves of suède; suède shoes of dull green; two shades of green in her leafy velvet hat: slim, clean, lithe-looking, delicately painted.

Possibly related to gaver (“to force-feed”), or from Vulgar Latin *gaba (“maw, mullet”). Or, possibly a Celtic borrowing (compare Irish gob (“beak”), Gaulish *gobbos (“mouth”)).

• IPA^(key): /ʒa.bo/

jabot m (plural jabots)

1. (obsolete) stomach
2. bird’s crop
3. shirt-frill, jabot
4. (Louisiana) bosom, breast

• “jabot”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
• “jabot”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.