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 also used among the French for the model or first words wherein an air or piece of music is composed, and given to a poet to regulate and finish. The canvas of a song contains certain notes of the composer, which show the poet the measure of whatever he is to make. Thus Du Lot says, he has canvas for ten sonnets against the muses.

Canvas is also the name of a cloth made of hemp, and used for ship-falls.

Canvas, among painters, is the cloth on which they usually draw their pictures; the canvas being smoothed over with a slick-stone, then fixed, 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.