apron

UK/ˈeɪ.pɹən/US/ˈeɪ.pɹən/

nounA2+3 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #5,076 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: aprons

An apron is the sheet of cloth you tie over your front so the cooking stays off your clothes. Loop over the head, strings knotted at the back, flour handprints down it by the time the bread goes in.

Anyone whose work makes a mess owns one — the woman behind the fish counter, the man at the paint table, the barber who ties one on you instead of wearing it himself. They come in cotton for the kitchen and leather for the workshop. The word travels, too: at an airport, the apron is the wide paved area where the planes park and load, and in a theatre the apron is the piece of stage that reaches out past the curtain. Both keep the same picture — a flat spread of ground laid out in front of something. And there is one fixed phrase, always about a grown man who never quite left home: tied to his mother's apron strings.

Definitions of apron

1nounapronA piece of cloth tied over the front of your clothes to keep them clean while you work.A2+~70%
“He put an apron on before he started chopping onions.”
- Said"Put an apron on before you start; that sauce goes everywhere."
- WrittenHer aprons hung by the door, each one stained with a different decade of dinners.
- UsedWear an apron and tie your hair back before handling raw dough.
- ContrastAn apron, not a towel. A towel dries you afterwards; an apron keeps the mess off in the first place. towel →
- Not thisA white jacket is not an apron. An apron hangs from the neck and covers only the front.
Patternput on / wear / take off an apron · tie an apron · a striped / leather apron · apron strings
2nounairportAt an airport, the paved area where aircraft park and are loaded.C1~28%
“Two planes were waiting out on the apron.”
3nountheatreThe part of a theatre stage that reaches out in front of the curtain.C1~2%
“She sang from the apron, right at the edge of the stage.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 115 sentences found in the wild and placed 89 of them on a sense (26 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Remember it

AP-ron → an APE

An ape is cooking in your kitchen. It has your apron on, tied twice round its middle, and it keeps wiping its hands down the front. Flour, egg, sauce, all of it on the apron. The fur underneath stays perfectly clean.

hooks ontoape

Phrases it lives in

tied to your mother's apron strings — still doing whatever your mother says, long past the age for it

Also practised as

nounThe paved area where aircraft park and load.

Where it comes from

Apron used to start with an N. It arrived as a napron, from Old French napperon, the little version of nappe, a tablecloth, from Latin mappa, a napkin. English kept mishearing a napron as an apron until the N walked off with the article and never came back. The same thing happened to adder, newt, nickname, orange and umpire.

Latin
mappa — napkin
Old French
napperon
Middle English
naperoun
English, today
apron

Built from

nappe · French — tablecloth

of napron (a napron → an apron), from Middle English naperoun, napron, apron, from Old French napperon, diminutive of nappe (“tablecloth”), from Latin mappa (“napkin”). For other similar cases of rebracketing, see adder, daffodil, newt, nickname, orange, trickle, umpire.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen, A Man Called Ove, Restaurant & Cafe

First appears in chapter 29 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

apron in the wild

An apron is a garment covering the front of the body, over clothing, to protect the clothing underneath.
Apron
The latter, though a related garment, has an open back and is worn as an apron.
Jumper (dress)
In American English, pinafore always refers to an apron.
Jumper (dress)
In other cases, the ramp is installed at the ferry slip and is called a linkspan or apron.
Ferry slip
If railcars are carried by the ferry the apron will have tracks for them.
Ferry slip

1 / 3

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the mappa family

map

apron — used about once every 1,238 pages · #5,076 · point at the bar for the others

apron strings

Definitions of apron

1nounapronA piece of cloth tied over the front of your clothes to keep them clean while you work.A2+~70%

“He put an apron on before he started chopping onions.”

Said"Put an apron on before you start; that sauce goes everywhere."
WrittenHer aprons hung by the door, each one stained with a different decade of dinners.
UsedWear an apron and tie your hair back before handling raw dough.
ContrastAn apron, not a towel. A towel dries you afterwards; an apron keeps the mess off in the first place. towel →
Not thisA white jacket is not an apron. An apron hangs from the neck and covers only the front.

Patternput on / wear / take off an apron · tie an apron · a striped / leather apron · apron strings

2nounairportAt an airport, the paved area where aircraft park and are loaded.C1~28%

“Two planes were waiting out on the apron.”

3nountheatreThe part of a theatre stage that reaches out in front of the curtain.C1~2%

“She sang from the apron, right at the edge of the stage.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 115 sentences found in the wild and placed 89 of them on a sense (26 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.