drab

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Related to drably: reservedly, appealingly, bluntly, tautly

drab

1. a light olive-brown colour
2. a fabric of a dull grey or brown colour
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Drab

 

a heavy, thick woolen fabric of a complicated inter-woven machine-spun yarn. Drab consists usually of two layers and as a result has high heat-insulating properties. The outer face of the fabric is often made from a higher quality of wool than the inner. Depending on the structure and the design of the weave, drab may be made with or without nap, of one or many colors, and with a plain face or a design on the lining. Drab is used for winter and spring-autumn coats.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
References in periodicals archive ?
Except for their children, who did have some clothes that were from our country, adults were drably clothed in gray, black or olive green- mostly in the so called "Mao" jackets.
"What they don't want is us to go out and play drably and win 1-0 and maybe finish halfway up the table.
A further contrast, between the drably oppressive Grenoble of his childhood after the death of his beloved mother and the liveliness of Milan, where the adult Stendhal experiences the love that defies description-and brings Brulard to an abrupt end-is a poignant reminder of an affective circularity that reunites the grown man with his former self.
Azaleas in a yard vie with wild wisteria across the street for the most "oohs" and "aahs," while tiny blooms of a papaw tree wait drably until their day of accomplishment--a banana-smell-alike but not taste-alike fruit.
We were hooked by the tapas, a plate of seafood that featured sweet lump crab presented rather drably in a bowl, and an enticing pile of pastrami-style smoked salmon.
Peahens, in striking contrast, have short, drably colored tails.
(6) Stella views her daughter's wedding through a window anonymously, drably dressed for the first time, in a crowd of other nameless Depression Era onlookers gawking at society nuptials from the street.
The drably designed monthly became a four-color glossy and established an Internet presence.
Ironically, it's the drably named Fisher who delivers the most devastating news: "There doesn't seem to Ix anything wrong with the tooth," he tells Richie, with an infuriating shrug Koslowski later learns is endemic to dentists.
Indeed, a tendency towards agonized sexual prohibition emerges as a drably recurring theme maid all the colorful variations of Gerin Oil symptomatology.
Shyamalan, good with dining-room tables and small, drably furnished rooms, is at sea when trying to capture the global scale of events.