English

Noun

cyclas

1. A long gown or surcoat, cut off in front, worn in the Middle Ages, sometimes embroidered or interwoven with gold.
   • Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Nigel

     The old tunic, overtunic and cyclas were too sad and simple for the new fashions, so now strange and brilliant cotehardies, pourpoints, courtepies, paltocks, hanselines and many other wondrous garments, particoloured or diapered, with with looped, embroidered or escalloped edges, flamed and glittered round the King.

   • 1995, Henry William Carless Davis, Francis Pierrepont Barnard, Medieval England

     The effigy of Sir John de Lyons (1346) at Warkworth, in Northamptonshire, shows slight further changes; a gambeson, a sleeved haketon, and a cyclas are worn.

2. A rich stuff from which such gowns were made.