waulk

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Verb

waulk (waulks, present participle waulking; past and past participle waulked)

1. (transitive, obsolete, Northern England, Scotland) to make cloth (especially tweed in Scotland) denser and more felt-like by soaking and beating.
   • 1900, Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica, Volume 1, page 310 ↗,

     The frame on which the cloth is waulked is a board some twelve to twenty-four feet long and about two feet broad, grooved lengthwise along its surface.

   • 1992, Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber, Random House (Arrow Books), page 590 ↗,

     I hid a smile at the mention of wool waulking. Alone among the Highland farms, I was sure, the women of Lailybroch waulked their wool not only to the old traditional chants but also to the rhythms of Moliére and Piron.

   • 2013, Marek Korczynski, Michael Pickering, Emma Robertson, Rhythms of Labour: Music at Work in Britain, Cambridge University Press, page 97 ↗,

     Here, we compare waulking songs and shanties to see how they operated in bringing women and men, respectively, into a sense of close alignment.

Synonyms

• (make denser and more like felt by soaking and beating) full, walk

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