sackcloth

From Middle English sakcloth, sekcloth, sekclath, sekklath. By surface analysis, sack +‎ cloth.

sackcloth (countable and uncountable, plural sackcloths)

1. A coarse hessian style of cloth used to make sacks.
2. (usually with “and ashes”, also figurative) Garments worn as an act of penance.

   Synonyms: hairshirt, cilice

   After he realised the gravity of his crime he spent some time wearing sackcloth and ashes.

   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 144:

     Next you saw her alone, a kneeling penitent at the foot of the crucifix; her long fair hair is unbound, and the sackcloth robe is girded by a cord round her slender shape: her hands are clasped, and tears are flowing fast from the quenched radiance of those shadowy eyes;...

   • 1959, “We Will All Go Together When We Go”, in Tom Lehrer (music), An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer, performed by Tom Lehrer:

     No more ashes, no more sackcloth / And an armband made of black cloth / Will someday never more adorn a sleeve

• wear sackcloth and ashes

• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “sackcloth”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.