Fulling
Fulling or
walking ("waulking" in
Scotland) is a step in
clothmaking which involves the cleansing of
cloth (particularly
wool) to get rid of oils, dirt, and other impurities. The word comes (possibly via
Old French) from
Latin fullo, a man who washed togas.
A
fuller is the worker who does the job. In the process,
fuller's earth was used. (This is a soft earthy material occurring in nature as an impure hydrous aluminium silicate.) The cloth might also be washed. After washing, to prevent shrinkage and wrinkling, the cloth would be stretched on great frames known as
tenters and held onto those frames by
tenterhooks. It is from this process that we derive the phrase
being on tenterhooks as meaning to be held in suspense. The area where the tenters were erected was known as a
tenterground.
Originally, this was literally pounding the cloth with the fuller's feet, but from the medieval period it was often carried out in a
water mill in which the cloth was beaten with wooden hammers, known as fulling stocks. Such mills were known as
fulling mills.
*
Waulking song*
Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved June 30, 2005.
