calico

"Lizards, skinks and dragons were secured in calico bags. These bags were concealed in bags of popcorn, biscuit tins and a women's handbag and placed inside cardboard boxes," the statement said.

From Barron's ● Feb. 17, 2026

"Here's my offering - the shorthair is a boy named Bob and the calico is a girl named Marley."

From BBC ● Jan. 16, 2025

At the time of this story's publication, both are still at the shelter waiting to be adopted . . . although the calico is currently advertised as bonded with a different gray tabby.

From Salon ● Dec. 6, 2024

Scanning a database of 188 cat genomes, Barsh’s team found every single orange, calico, and tortoiseshell cat had the exact same mutation.

From Science Magazine ● Nov. 27, 2024

Ma had calico for a dress, too; it was brown, with a big, feathery white pattern all over it.

From "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Hansons' cat is specifically a torn, and cat lovers soon pointed out that all calicoes are female.

From Time Magazine Archive

By the Victorian era, odd batches of brocade, chintzes and calicoes were patched into crazy quilts, more a tour de force in stitchery than in pattern.

From Time Magazine Archive

If she had been home, she might have spent the dark afternoons spinning or sewing, but the mistress bought her woolens and calicoes at the village stores.

From "Lyddie" by Katherine Paterson

I have by two or three opportunities acquainted you that I received the calicoes you ordered for me, by Sampson, though many of them were much injured by being wet.

From Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail Adams During the Revolution with a Memoir of Mrs. Adams by Abigail Adams

She had never known what it was to take a ten-dollar bill from a pile, and spend it with luxurious recklessness in white flannelette and nainsook and shirting and various colored calicoes for the children.

From God's Green Country A Novel of Canadian Rural Life by Ethel M. Chapman

Arhgap36’s inactivation pattern in calicos and tortoiseshells is typical of a gene on the X chromosome, Brown says, but it’s unusual that a deletion mutation would make a gene more active, not less.

From Science Magazine ● Nov. 27, 2024

Scientists curious about those sex differences—or perhaps just cat lovers—have spent more than 60 years unsuccessfully seeking the gene that causes orange fur and the striking patchwork of colors in calicos and tortoiseshells.

From Science Magazine ● Nov. 27, 2024

The prints are Laura Ashley-esque micro-florals, calicos and gingham, the necklines are high, sometimes there is a bib or apron, there is usually at least one ruffle.

From New York Times ● Sep. 12, 2018

Kansas City grew big and rich on the nation's appetite for meat and bread and for the West's desires for the East's calicos and gadgets.

From Time Magazine Archive

Every year, the children watched to see that coat emerge—big and shaggy and always different, sewed with new furs, patched with discarded calicos, even velvets.

From "The Birchbark House" by Louise Erdrich