in commerce, a very clear unbleached cloth of hemp, or flax, wove regularly in little squares. It is used for working tapestry with the needle, by passing the threads of gold, silver, silk, or wool, through the intervals or squares.

Canvas is also a coarse cloth of hemp, unbleached, somewhat clear, which serves to cover women's stays, also to stiffen men's clothes, and to make some other of their wearing-apparel, &c.

Canvas is used among the French for the model and first words, where an air or piece of music is composed, and given to a poet to regulate and finish.

Canvas is also a name sometimes given to sail-cloth.

Canvas, among painters, is the cloth on which they usually draw their pictures; the canvas being smoothed over with a slick-flone, then sized, and afterwards whitened over, makes what the painters call their primed cloth, on which they draw their first sketches with coal or chalk, and afterwards finish with colours.