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matted

adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,959 of 15,258neutral

Matted means tangled into a thick dirty mass. Matted hair, matted fur, matted with blood.

In an animal it is a welfare matter rather than an appearance one, because mats pull on the skin and hide sores underneath, and a badly matted coat has to be shaved rather than combed. In photography a matte is a different word about surface finish.

Definitions of matted

  1. 1adjectivemattedTangled into a thick dirty mass.C1

    “After a week in the jungle, his hair was matted with sweat and mud.”

matted is a quality of tangling.

Where it comes from

  1. Middle English

    matte

  2. English

    mat

  3. English, today

    matted

mat comes from Middle English matte. Middle English matte (“mat”), from Old English meatte (“mat”), from Latin matta (“mat made of rushes”), from xpu - or phn - (compare Hebrew מיטה (“bed, couch”)). Cognate with German Matte (“mat”), Danish måtte (“mat”), Faroese - and Icelandic motta (“rug, mat”), Norwegian matte (“mat, rug”), Swedish matta (“carpet, rug, mat”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

matted in the wild

  • A low platform about 16' 10 20' with bamboo poles at each corner garlanded with flowers, plantain and mango leaves, and roofed with matted palm leaves.

    Bayalaata

  • Euphorbia serpens is a species of Euphorbia known by the common name matted sandmat.

    Euphorbia serpens

  • Lupinus breweri is a species of lupine known by the common names Brewer's lupine and matted lupine.

    Lupinus breweri

  • Despite the common name, matted sea-lavender is not related to the lavenders, but is a perennial herb with flowers with five petals in clusters.

    Limonium bellidifolium

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.