flax

UK/flaks/US/flaks/

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,750 of 15,258leans written

Flax is a plant whose fibre is spun into linen. A field of flax, retted flax, flax seed.

Making linen from it is laborious: the stems are rotted in water so the fibre separates, then beaten and combed, which is why linen was always dearer than wool. The seed is linseed, pressed for oil, so one crop gives cloth and oil both.

Definitions of flax

1nounflaxA plant whose fibre is spun into linen.B2+
“In the past, the fields around the village were blue with flowering flax every summer.”

flax is a plant.

Where it comes from

Old English fleax, from a Germanic root related to a word meaning to plait.

Proto-Indo-European
*pleḱ- — to plait
Proto-Germanic
*flahsą
Old English
fleax
Middle English
flax
English, today
flax

From Middle English flax, from Old English fleax, from Proto-Germanic flahsą, from Proto-Indo-European pleḱ- (“to plait”). Cognate with Old Frisian flax, Dutch vlas, Old High German flahs (German Flachs); the Northern Germanic (and most likely the Gothic too) stem is different.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

flax in the wild

In addition to referring to the plant, the word "flax" may refer to the unspun fibers of the flax plant.
Flax
The plant species is known only as a cultivated plant and appears to have been domesticated just once from the wild species Linum bienne, called pale flax.
Flax
Linen () is a textile made from the bast fibers of the flax plant.
Linen
Linen textiles can be woven or knitted from flax fibers.
Linen
Linum (flax) is a genus of approximately 200 species in the flowering plant family Linaceae.
Linum

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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

flaxen

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