the.com/hessian
German soldiers rented out to crush a revolution, now mostly known as scratchy potato-sack fabric.
means A coarse, strong woven fabric made from jute or hemp (also called burlap), used for sacks and rough wrapping — or, historically, one of the German mercenary soldiers hired by Britain during the American Revolution.
from From Hesse, a region of central Germany, whose ruler famously hired out troops to the British crown in the late 18th century to fight in America — so many that 'Hessian' became shorthand for any German mercenary. The fabric sense follows a similar logic: the rough cloth was associated with the region (and reputedly with the soldiers' kit and provisions), so the place-name stuck to the textile too.
- rented army
- Britain hired 30,000 Hessians to fight American colonists
- fabric name
- Coarse jute cloth named after Hesse, Germany
- headless horseman
- Sleepy Hollow's ghost was a slain Hessian soldier
- matrix math
- A Hessian matrix maps a function's second derivatives
- crossed the Delaware
- Washington routed sleeping Hessians at Trenton, 1776
hessian fly — destructive pest of wheat crops, named after hessian soldiers in american revolutionary war
hessian boots — knee-high military boots originating from hesse, germany in the 18th century