Other forms: towels
A towel is the soft cloth you dry yourself with after a shower. A bath towel, hand towel, throw in the towel.
The loops of terry towelling give it its surface area, which is what makes it absorbent — and fabric softener coats those loops and makes it worse. Throw in the towel is from boxing, where a corner threw one into the ring to stop the fight. Note that the word comes from a Germanic root meaning to wash.
1nountowelA cloth used for drying.
“After swimming, the kids wrapped themselves in big beach towels.”
towel is a cloth.
Old French toaille comes from a Frankish word for a washing cloth, from a Germanic verb meaning to wash.
Proto-Germanic
*þwahaną — to wash
Frankish
*þwahilu — cloth
Medieval Latin
toallia
Old French
toaille — towel
Middle English
towayle
English, today
towel
From Middle English towayle, towel, towail, towaille, from Old French toaille (“towel”) (modern French touaille), Medieval Latin toallia, from Frankish þwahilu (“cloth”), from Proto-Germanic þwahaną (“to wash”). Cognate with Old High German dwahila (“towel”) (modern dialectal {{cog|de|
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA