Can"vas (?), n. [OE. canvas, canevas, F. canevas, LL. canabacius hempen cloth, canvas, L. cannabis hemp, fr. G. &?;. See Hemp.] 1. A strong cloth made of hemp, flax, or cotton; -- used for tents, sails, etc.

By glimmering lanes and walls of canvas led.
Tennyson.

2. (a) A coarse cloth so woven as to form regular meshes for working with the needle, as in tapestry, or worsted work. (b) A piece of strong cloth of which the surface has been prepared to receive painting, commonly painting in oil.

History . . . does not bring out clearly upon the canvas the details which were familiar.
J. H. Newman.

3. Something for which canvas is used: (a) A sail, or a collection of sails. (b) A tent, or a collection of tents. (c) A painting, or a picture on canvas.

To suit his canvas to the roughness of the see.
Goldsmith.

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

4. A rough draft or model of a song, air, or other literary or musical composition; esp. one to show a poet the measure of the verses he is to make. Grabb.

Can"vas, a. Made of, pertaining to, or resembling, canvas or coarse cloth; as, a canvas tent.

English
• A type of coarse cloth, woven from hemp, useful for making sails and tents or as a surface for paintings
        Quotations
       * 1882: 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. — James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, Volume 4, p. 556.
  
• A piece of canvas cloth stretched across a frame on which one may paint
  
• A basis for creative work
        The author takes rural midwestern life as a canvas for a series of tightly woven character studies
  
• (nautical) sails in general
  
• A tent - "He spent the night under canvas".
  
• To assess and attempt to attract political support, often by party supporters from door to door.