Definition of "muslin"

[…] my pupils leave off their thick shoes and tight old tartan pelisses, and wear silk stockings and muslin frocks, as fashionable baronets' daughters should.

1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 11, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848

A bleached or unbleached thin white cotton cloth, unprinted and undyed. [Nineteen varieties are thereafter listed.]

1875, Edward H. Knight, Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary, volume 2, page 1502

It was April 22, 1831, and a young man was walking down Whitehall in the direction of Parliament Street. He wore shepherd's plaid trousers and the swallow-tail coat of the day, with a figured muslin cravat wound about his wide-spread collar.

1906, Stanley J[ohn] Weyman, chapter I, in Chippinge Borough, New York, N.Y.: McClure, Phillips & Co., page 01

Other very different styles of fabric are now indifferently called muslins, and the term is used differently on the respective sides of the Atlantic.

1875, Edward H. Knight, Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary, volume 2, pages 1502–1503

"That was a pretty bit of muslin hanging on your arm—who was she?” asked the fascinating student.

1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 51, in The History of Pendennis. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850