A very fine linen (or sometimes cotton) fabric with a rather open texture. [It] is used for the sleeves of a bishop's official dress in the English Church, and, figuratively, stands for the office itself.
FACE. We'll wet it to-morrow; and our silver-beakers
And tavern cups. Where be the French petticoats,
And girdles and hangers?
SUB. Here, in the trunk,
And the bolts of lawn.
Ben Jonson. The Alchemist (1610)
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The thick red-gold hair had been brushed to a smooth gleam that swept the collar of a fine lawn shirt with tucked front, belled sleeves, and lace-trimmed wrist frills that matched the cascade of the starched jabot at the throat, decorated with a ruby stickpin.
Diana Gabaldon. Outlander (1991)
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Two hundred sempstresses were employed to make me shirts, and linen for my bed and table, all of the strongest and coarsest kind they could get; which, however, they were forced to quilt together in several folds, for the thickest was some degrees finer than lawn.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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snowbanks of girls and young ladies clad in lawn and muslin and conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their grandmothers’ ancient trinkets