half-starched

Updated: July 18, 2026

A tall and slim figure, not yet shortened from its five feet ten or eleven by the habitual stoop, which ten years later brought him down to less than middle height; a stiff, blue frock-coat; prominent, half-starched wristbands, and tall collars of the Gladstonian type; and the bright blue stock which every one knows for his heraldic bearing: no rings or gewgaws, but a long thin gold chain to his watch: plain old-English gentleman, neither fashionable bourgeois nor artistic mountebank.

W. G. (William Gershom) Collingwood - The Life of John Ruskin