Other forms: labels, labeled, labelled, labeling, labelling
A label is the small paper on a product with its price or size. Read the label, a price label, stick a label on.
Food labels are regulated in detail, and the ingredients must be listed in order of weight — which is the single most useful thing to know when reading one. A record label is a company, named from the disc's paper centre. Figuratively, labelling somebody is fixing them in a category.
1nounlabelA small paper on a product with information about it.
“Always read the label before you give medicine to a child.”
2verbfixTo fix somebody or something in a category.
“He was labelled a troublemaker at school and never lost the name.”
label is a tag.
Also accepted in games: tag
Old French label meant a narrow strip of cloth, from a Frankish word for a rag. Lapel and lap are relatives.
Proto-Indo-European
*leb- — blade
Proto-Germanic
*lappǭ
Frankish
*lappā — torn piece of cloth
Old French
label
Middle English
label — narrow band, strip of cloth
English, today
label
Built from
From Middle English label (“narrow band, strip of cloth”), from Old French label, lambel (Modern French lambeau), from Frankish lappā (“torn piece of cloth”), from Proto-Germanic lappǭ, lappô (“cloth stuff, rag, scraps, flap, dewlap, lobe, rabbit ear”), from Proto-Indo-European leb- (“blade”). Cognate with Old High German lappa (“rag, piece of cloth”), Old English læppa (“skirt, flap of a garment”). More at lap.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA