1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Huckaback

 

HUCKABACK,^[1] the name given to a type of cloth used for towels. For this purpose it has perhaps been more extensively used in the linen trade than any other weave. One of the chief merits of a towel is its capacity for absorbing moisture; plain and other flat-surfaced cloths do not perform this function satisfactorily, but cloths made with huckaback, as well as those made with the honeycomb and similar weaves, are particularly well adapted for this purpose. The body or foundation of the cloth is plain and therefore sound in structure (see designs A and B in figure), but at fixed intervals some of the warp threads float on the surface of the cloth, while at the same time a number of weft threads float on the back. Thus the cloth has a somewhat similar appearance on both sides. Weave A is the ordinary and most used huck or huckaback, while weave B, which is usually woven with double weft, is termed the Devon or medical huck. The cloths made by the use of these weaves were originally all linen, but are too often adulterated with inferior fibres.

1. Skeat, Etym. Dict. (1898), says, “The word bears so remarkable resemblance to Low Ger. hukkebak, Ger. huckeback, pick-a-back, that it seems reasonable to suppose that it at first meant ‘peddler’s ware.’ ” The New English Dictionary does not consider that the connexion can at present be assumed.