in commerce, a sort of cloth resembling linens made of cotton. The name is taken from that of Calicut, a city on the coast of Malabar, being the first place at which the Portuguese landed when they discovered the India trade. The Spaniards still call it calicu.

Callicoes are of different kinds, plain, printed, painted, stained, dyed, chintz, muslins, and the like, all included under the general denomination of callicoes. Some of them are painted with various flowers of different colours: others are not stained, but have a stripe of gold and silver quite through the piece, and at each end is fixed a tissue of gold, silver, and silk, intermixed with flowers. The printing of callicoes was first set on foot in London about the year 1676.