Noun

Singular damask

Plural damasks

damask (plural damasks)

1. An ornate silk fabric originating from Damascus.

   True damasks are pure silk.

   • 1836, Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

     […] but what struck Tom's fancy most was a strange, grim-looking, high backed chair, carved in the most fantastic manner, with a flowered damask cushion, and the round knobs at the bottom of the legs carefully tied up in red cloth, as if it had got the gout in its toes.

2. A damask rose.
3. A grayish-pink color, like that of the damask rose.

   damask colour:

   • 1849, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

     Thursday. D. certainly improved. Better night. Slight tinge of damask revisiting cheek.

Adjective

damask

1. Of a grayish-pink color, like that of the damask rose.
   • 1973, Stephen Sondheim, Sweeney Todd

     My cage has many rooms / Damask and dark / Nothing there sings, / Not even my lark.

Quotations

• 1602: But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, / Feed on her damask cheek — William Shakespeare, Twlefth Night
• 1849: They had a lurking suspicion even, that he died of secret love; though I must say there was a picture of him in the house with a damask nose, which concealment did not appear to have ever preyed upon. — Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

Damask (Arabic: دمسق‎) is a reversible figured fabric of silk, wool, linen, cotton, or synthetic fibers, with a pattern formed by weaving. Damasks are woven with one warp yarn and one weft yarn, usually with the pattern in warp-faced satin weave and the ground in weft-faced or sateen weave. Twill damasks include a twill-woven ground or pattern.