buckram: [14] Etymologically, buckram ‘stiffened cloth’ is cloth from Bokhara, a city in central Asia (now the Uzbek city of Bukhara), from where in the Middle Ages cloth was exported to Europe. And not just any cloth: originally buckram denoted a high-quality cotton or linen fabric, and it was only in the 15th century that the word came to be applied to a coarser textile. It came into English from Old French boquerant. [buckram etymology, buckram origin, 英语词源]