Cambric or batiste is a fine dense cloth. It is a lightweight plain-weave fabric, originally from the commune of Cambrai (in present-day northern France), woven greige (neither bleached nor dyed), then bleached, piece-dyed, and often glazed or calendered. Initially it was made of linen; from the 18th and 19th centuries the term came to apply to cotton fabrics as well.

Chambray is a similar fabric, with a coloured (often blue or grey) warp and white filling; the name "chambray" replaced "cambric" in the United States in the early 19th century.

Cambric is used as fabric for linens, shirts, handkerchiefs, ruffs, lace, and in cutwork and other needlework. Dyed black, it is also commonly used as the dustcover on the underside of upholstered furniture.

Cambric is a finely woven cloth with a plain weave and a smooth surface appearance, the result of the calendering process. It may be made of linen or cotton. The fabric may be dyed any of many colours.

Batiste is a kind of cambric; it is "of similar texture, but differently finished, and made of cotton as well as of linen". Batiste also may be dyed or printed. Batiste is the French word for cambric, and some sources consider them to be the same, but in English, they are two distinct fabrics.^{[citation needed]}

Chambray, though the same type of fabric as cambric, has a coloured warp and a white weft, though it may be "made from any colour as you may wish, in the warp, and also in the filling; only have them differ from each other."

Chambray differs from denim in that "chambray's warp and weft threads will alternate one over the other, while denim’s warp thread will go over two threads in the weft before going under one." As a result, the colour of chambray cloth is similar front and back, while the reverse side of denim is lighter in colour.

Cambric was originally a kind of fine, white, plain-weave linen cloth made at or near Cambrai. The word comes from Kameryk or Kamerijk, the Flemish name of Cambrai, which became part of France in 1677. The word is attested since 1530. It is a synonym of the French word batiste, itself attested since 1590. Batiste itself comes from the Picard batiche, attested since 1401 and derived from the old French battre for bowing wool. The modern form batiste, or baptiste, comes from a popular merge with the surname Baptiste, pronounced Batisse, as indicated by the use of the expressions thoile batiche (1499) and toile de baptiste (1536) for the same fabric. The alleged invention of the fabric, around 1300, by a weaver called Baptiste or Jean-Baptiste Cambray or Chambray, from the village of Castaing in the peerage of Marcoing, near Cambrai, has no historic ground. Cambric was a finer quality and more expensive than lawn (from the French laune, initially a plain-weave linen fabric from the city of Laon in France). Denoting a geographic origin from the city of Cambrai or its surroundings (Cambresis in French), cambric is an exact equivalent of the French cambrésine (/kɑ̃.bʁe.zin/), a very fine, almost sheer white linen plain-weave fabric, to be distinguished from cambrasine, a fabric comparable to the French lawn despite its foreign origin.