(Bleak House, Ch. 14.)
seems to be a clipped form from Old French dialect quiterne, for guiterne, Greco-Lat. cithara. Cotgrave explains mandore as a "kitt, small gitterne." The doublet guitar is from Spanish.
The two pretty words dimity and samite—
"An arm
Rose up from out the bosom of the lake,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
Holding the sword."
(Tennyson, Morte d'Arthur, l. 29.)
are both connected with Gk. μίτος, thread. Dimity is the plural, dimiti, of Ital. dimito, "a kind of course cotton or flanell" (Florio), from Greco-Lat. dimitus, double thread (cf. twill, p. [148]). Samite, Old Fr. samit, whence Ger. Samt, velvet, is in medieval Latin hexamitus, six-thread; this is Byzantine Gk. ἑξάμιτον, whence also Old Slavonic aksamitu. The Italian form is sciamito, "a kind of sleave, feret, or filosello silke" (Florio). The word feret used here by Florio is from Ital. fioretto, little flower. It was also called floret silk. Florio explains the plural fioretti as "a kind of course silke called f[l]oret or ferret silke," and Cotgrave has fleuret, "course silke, floret silke." This doublet of floweret is not obsolete in the sense of tape—
"'Twas so fram'd and express'd no tribunal could shake it,
And firm as red wax and black ferret could make it."
(Ingoldsby, The Housewarming.)
Parish and diocese are closely related, parish, Fr. paroisse, representing Greco-Lat. par-oikia (οἶκος, a house), and diocese coming through Old French from Greco-Lat. di-oikesis. Skirt is the Scandinavian doublet of shirt from Vulgar Lat. ex-curtus, which has also given us short. The form without the prefix appears in Fr. court, Ger. kurz, and the English diminutive kirtle—
"What stuff wilt have a kirtle of?"