Definition of "farthingale"
(historical) A hooped structure in cloth worn to extend the skirt of women's dresses; a hooped petticoat.
Quotations
women […] make trunk-sleeves of wyre and whale-bone bodies, backes of lathes, and stiffe bumbasted verdugals, and to the open-view of all men paint and embellish themselves with counterfeit and borrowed beauties […].
1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […]
As I entered the room, the fire from the large square stove, where the logs were burning lustily, threw a red, flickering light through the wide-open door over the room, which was very deep, and furnished in the old style with high-backed Russia leather chairs, and one of those settees which were intended for farthingales and straight up-and-down positions.
1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 4