Other forms: linens
Linen is the cool strong cloth woven from flax. A linen shirt, linen trousers, a linen tablecloth.
It creases enormously, which is part of its character and the reason it looks expensive and untidy at once. It is stronger than cotton and gets softer with washing. Linen also means household cloth generally — bed linen, table linen, the linen cupboard — even when none of it is actually made of flax. Note wash your dirty linen in public, meaning to air private disputes where others can see.
1nounlinenA cool strong cloth woven from flax.
“Linen creases if you look at it and nobody minds.”
2nounhouseholdHousehold cloth such as sheets and tablecloths.
“The linen cupboard is on the landing.”
linen is a cloth.
Old English linen meant made of flax, from lin, flax — the same root as Latin linum, which gives line, linoleum and lingerie. A line was originally a linen thread, so the whole geometry of the word comes from cloth.
Proto-Indo-European
*līno- — flax
Proto-Germanic
*līną — flax
Proto-West Germanic
*līnīn — made of flax
Old English
līnen — linen", "made of flax
Middle English
lynnen
English, today
linen
From Middle English lynnen, lynen, from Old English līnen (“linen", "made of flax”), from Proto-West Germanic līnīn (“made of flax”), from Proto-Germanic līną (“flax”), from Proto-Indo-European līno- (“flax”), equivalent to line + -en. Cognate with Latin līnum (“flax”) and thus also Linum. More at line.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Clothes & Fashion, Hotel & Staying Away