gauffer

From French gaufrer (“to figure cloth, velvet, and other stuffs”), from gaufre (“honeycomb, waffle”); of Germanic origin. See waffle, wafer, and compare goffer, gopher (“an animal”).

gauffer (third-person singular simple present gauffers, present participle gauffering, simple past and past participle gauffered)

1. (transitive) To plait, crimp, or flute

   Synonym: goffer

   gauffered crape

   • 1906, Eliza Davis Aria, Costume: Fanciful, Historical, and Theatrical, Chapter 7:

     High heels were conspicuous everywhere, but it was left to Italy to have the honour of popularising the most ridiculous fashion of the chopines or stilted clogs, which asserted themselves at different heights, mostly outrageous, beneath a covering of gauffered leather, a commodity which looks like the modern poker-work.

   • 1861, Isabella Beeton, chapter LXVIII, in The Book of Household Management; […], London: S[amuel] O[rchart] Beeton, […], →OCLC:

     Into the hollow cylinder a red-hot iron is pushed, which heats it; and the smooth outside of the latter is used, on which articles such as frills and plaited articles are drawn. Crimping and gauffering-machines are used for a kind of plaiting where much regularity is required.

2. (transitive, historical, bookbinding) To decorate the edges of a text block with a heated iron.

• “gauffer”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• gauffre, ruffage