Definition of "wimple"

Even the unprecedented detail of the Urbanist regulations is still not sufficient to enable us to envisage with accuracy the appearance of the wimple or the other items that went to make up the habit.

1999, Cordelia Warr, “Religious dress in Italy in the late Middle Ages”, in Amy De La Haye, editor, Defining Dress: Dress as Object, Meaning, and Identity, Manchester University Press, page 82

this wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy

c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene i]

IV A lovely Ladie[*] rode him faire beside, Upon a lowly Asse more white then snow, Yet she much whiter, but the same did hide 30 Under a vele, that wimpled was full low, And over all a blacke stole she did throw, As one that inly mournd: so was she sad, And heavie sat upon her palfrey slow; Seemed in heart some hidden care she had, 35 And by her in a line a milke white lambe she lad.

1590, Edmund Spenser, Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I‎, published 1921

Stars wavered and wimpled in the black waters of the Hudson as a launch put out in silence from the foot of Twenty-seventh Street.

1920, George Allan England, The Flying Legion‎

She wimpled about in the pale moonbeam, Like a feather that floats on a wind tossed-stream; And momently athwart her track The quarl upreared his island back, And the fluttering scallop behind would float, And patter the water about the boat; But he bailed her out with his colen-bell, And he kept her trimmed with a wary tread, While on every side like lightening fell

1836, Joseph Rodman Drake, The Culprit Fay‎