Other forms: laces
Lace is delicate fabric full of decorative holes, seen on wedding dresses. Trimmed with lace, a lace collar, handmade lace.
The holes are the fabric — it is built from thread and empty space together rather than woven and then cut. Whole towns lived on it before machines arrived in the nineteenth century. A shoelace is a different sense of the same word, and to lace a drink is to add spirits.
1nounlaceDelicate openwork fabric.
“Her wedding dress had long sleeves made of white lace.”
2nouncordA cord for fastening a shoe.
“Your lace is undone; tie it before you trip.”
lace is a fabric, or a cord.
Old French las means a noose or cord, from Latin laqueus, a snare. Lasso is the same word.
Latin
laqueus
Vulgar Latin
*laceum
Old French
las
Middle English
lace
English, today
lace
From Middle English lace, laace, las, from Old French las, from Vulgar Latin laceum, based on Latin laqueus. a doublet of lasso.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA