canvas

A type of coarse cloth, woven from hemp (traditionally) or from cotton and polyesters, useful for making sails, tents, and overcoats or as a surface for paintings.

The term canvas is very widely used, as well to denote the coarse fabrics employed for kitchen use, as for strainers, and wraps for meat, as for the best quality of ordinary table and shirting linen.

A piece of such cloth stretched across a frame on which one may paint an artwork.

She is painting a moonlight scene on the canvas.

Light, rich as that which glows on the canvas of Claude.

A mesh of loosely woven cotton strands or molded plastic to be decorated with needlepoint, cross-stitch, rug hooking, or other crafts.

A basis for creative work.

The author takes rural midwestern life as a canvas for a series of tightly woven character studies

A region on which graphics can be rendered.

To cover (an area or object) with canvas.

Obsolete spelling of canvass.

And with the aunſwere here vpon eftſoones in hand they go, / The doubtfull wordes wherof they ſcan and canuas to and fro.

But nowe the Meſſenger that was thus ſent to the Lorde Hume [Alexander Home, 5th Lord Home], comming to him declared in what caſe hys houſe and people ſtoode, who beeing (as was ſuppoſed) not ſo farre off, but that he might heare howe luſtily the Engliſhe Canons did canuas and batter his Humiſhe Caſtell Walles, did nowe agree to meete the Marshall maiſter Drurie [William Drury] two myles diſtant from the ſayde Caſtell, and there to common further with him in that matter.