I had a Dream, Joe

What the hell is a seersucker suit?

seersucker (SIER-suk-uhr), noun

A light, thin fabric, generally cotton or rayon, with a crinkled surface and a usually striped pattern.

[Hindi sirsakar, from Persian shiroshakar : shir, milk (from Middle Persian) + o, and, from Middle Persian u, from Old Persian uta + shakar, sugar, from Sanskrit sarkara, from the resemblance of its smooth and rough stripes to the smooth surface of milk and bumpy texture of sugar.]

WORD HISTORY: Through its name, seersucker, a lightweight fabric for summer suits and dresses, gives us a glimpse at the history of India. The facts of the word's history are that it came into English from the East Indian language Hindi (sirsakar). The word in Hindi was borrowed from the Persian compound shiroshakar, meaning literally "milk and sugar" but used in a figurative way for a striped linen garment. The Persian word shakar "sugar," in turn came from Sanskrit sarkara. Persian, Indian, English--clearly we are dealing with multiple cultural borrowing here, and the Persians did indeed borrow sugar and the word for sugar from India in the 6th century. During and after Tamerlane's invasion of India in the late 14th century, the opportunity for borrowing Persian things and words such as shir-o-shakar was present, since the Mongol Turk Tamerlane incorporated Persia as well as India into his empire. It then remained for the English during the 18th century, when the East India Company and England were moving toward supremacy in India, to borrow the material and its name seersucker (first recorded in 1722 in the form Sea Sucker) from an Indian language.

"For some strange reason, I was wearing my good suit that day -- a seersucker, along with my best shirt and a tie." Chapin, William, Life in the water.(swimming), Mother Earth News, 16 Jun 1995.

-Thanks to Greg O'Beirne