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Hamlet vocabulary

8 fashion terms (clothing, hair styles, fabrics, etc.)

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chopine: tags: [fashion]

► definition

Definition:

1. a tall women's platform shoe of 15th, 16th and 17th century Europe. It was originally designed to protect the wearer from mud but quickly became a fashion statement. The height of the shoe ostensibly boosted the wearer's social standing with the tallest design reaching 20 inches.
2. an obsolete French unit, approximately 250 mL ~= 1 pint

^{photo: by Rama & the Shoe Museum in Lausanne, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 France license.}
^{https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shoemuseum_Lausanne-IMG_7291.jpg}

► uses

Uses:

Shakespeare joked about the extreme height of the chopines in style in his day by using the word altitude (Hamlet 2.2, the prince greets one of the visiting players – the adolescent boy who would have played the female parts in the all-male troupe – by noting how much "nearer to heaven" the lad had grown since he last saw him "by the altitude of a chopine.")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopine

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By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven

than when I saw you last by the altitude of a chopine.

William Shakespeare. Hamlet

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He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a chopine

James Joyce. Ulysses