Both Uses
motley
in
Sweet Far Thing
(Auto-generated)
- We're a motley band—factory girls in their new finery, Bessie holding fast to a long stick, Pippa in her queenly cape, Ann and I in our nightgowns, and Fee with a layer of chain mail over hers, sword at the ready.†
Chpt 3
- Excited gasps trickle through our motley crew of girls.†
Chpt 4 *
Definitions:
-
(1)
(motley) consisting of a haphazard assortment of different kinds of a thing -- sometimes implying that the collection does not go well together and is of low quality
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Motley can refer specifically to different colors or a multicolored woolen fabric woven of mixed threads in 14th to 17th century England; or to a court jester's costume made of such fabric. This sense of the word is still reasonably common in the expression motley fool which refers to a jester in such garb.