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whole cloth - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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whole cloth (countable and uncountable, plural whole cloths)

  1. (textiles) A newly made textile which has not yet been cut.
    Synonym: broadcloth
  2. (figurative, uncountable, used attributively or preceded by various prepositions) The fictitious material from which complete fabrications, lies with no basis in truth, are made.

    Mr. Doe's account of the accident was made from whole cloth.

  3. (figurative, uncountable) Something made completely new, with no history, and not based on anything else.

    The plans for the widget were drawn from whole cloth.

    • 1988, Supreme Court of Canada, R. v. Morgentaler:

      The decisions made by judges, however, and the interpretations that they advance or accept must be plausibly inferable from something in the Charter. It is not for the courts to manufacture a constitutional right out of whole cloth.

    • 2022, Mark Bergen, Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination‎[1], Penguin, →ISBN:

      Susan Wojcicki became YouTube's leader during the obvious phase. She didn't need to invent YouTube's business plan from whole cloth.

whole cloth (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic) in full extent, wholesale, entirely, without changes or additions

    • 2012 May 31, Tasha Robinson, “Film: Review: Snow White And The Huntsman”, in The A.V. Club‎[2]:

      Some are strangely detailed, like the hugely antlered white deer-creature-cum-forest-god seemingly stolen whole cloth from Princess Mononoke.