W W W. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA NA . C O M
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e word tippet has a long history in the English language.
It appears in an 800-year-old document, and is in use to this
day.
At the word's first citation in the year 1300, a tippet was a
decorative garment, a long, scarf-like streamer worn around the
shoulders and hanging to the knees or the ground. It evolved
into increasingly complex forms, such as fur or feather-tipped
capes.
Clergymen in their formal vestments wear narrow silk tip-
pets around the neck to signify rank or religious holidays. is
sense has been in use since the mid-1500s.
en, in the early 1800s, the word appeared in a different
sense altogether. In his work e Etymological Dictionary of the
Scottish Language, minister and lexicographer John Jamieson
defined a tippet as "one length of hair or gut in a fishing line."
Sometime in the 17th or 18th century, the word migrated
from its sartorial sense to the angling world, with its first
formal definition in Jamieson's 1808 dictionary.
e Old English word tip, meaning "point or slender
extremity" appears to unite these two senses of tippet. e
costume tippet was early on bedecked with points of fur
or feather, while the fisher's tippet is a length of slender
monofilament attached to the "tip" of the line, which, in turn,
is attached to the fly.
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