cloth
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: klŏth
ipa: /klɒθ/
ipa: /klɔːθ/
enpr: klôth
ipa: /klɔθ/
enpr: klŏth
ipa: /klɑθ/
enpr: klōth
ipa: /kloʊθ/
rhymes: -ɒθ
Forms: form: cloths
form: clothes
form: cloath
form: clath
form: clathe
form: claith
Etymology: From Middle English cloth, clath, from Old English clāþ (“cloth, clothes, covering, sail”), from Proto-Germanic *klaiþą (“garment”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *gleyt- (“to cling to, cleave, stick”) (compare Albanian ngjit (“to stick, attach, glue”)), a form of *gleh₁y- (“to smear; to stick”). Cognate with Scots clath (“cloth”), North Frisian klaid (“dress, garment”), Saterland Frisian Klood (“dress, apparel”), West Frisian kleed (“cloth, article of clothing”), Dutch kleed (“robe, dress”), Low German kleed (“dress, garment”), German Kleid (“gown, dress”), Danish klæde (“cloth, dress”), Norwegian klede, Swedish kläde (“cloth”), Icelandic klæði (“cloth, dressing”), Old English clīþan (“to adhere, stick”).
Senses: examples: text: In trumpets for assisting the hearing, all reverbation of the trumpet must be avoided. It must be made thick, of the least elastic materials, and covered with cloth externally.
ref: 1820, Encyclopaedia Britannica; Or A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature, 6th edition, volume 20, Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Company, page 501:
text: “It was last Saturday […] that two boys, playing in the little spinney just outside Wembley Park Station, came across three large parcels done up in American cloth.[…]”
ref: 1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “The Lisson Grove Mystery”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1905, →OCLC; republished as popular edition, London: Greening & Co., 1909, OCLC 11192831, quoted in The Case of Miss Elliott (ebook no. 2000141h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg of Australia, February 2020:
text: There were other types of looms for producing various specialised types of cloth, for example fustians and velvets, but there is not space here to discuss these.
ref: 2017, Roger Holden, Manufacturing the Cloth of the World, →ISBN, page 26:
glosses: A fabric, usually made of woven, knitted, or felted fibres or filaments, such as used in dressing, decorating, cleaning or other practical use.
examples: text: One day he came, as I thought accidentally, to dinner. My huſband was very much engaged in buſineſs, and quitted the room ſoon after the cloth was removed.
ref: 1798, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, “[Maria: or, The] Wrongs of Woman”, in W[illiam] Godwin, editor, Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. […], volume II, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […]; and G[eorge,] G[eorge] and J[ohn] Robinson, […], →OCLC, chapter XI, page 52:
glosses: Specifically, a tablecloth, especially as spread before a meal or removed afterwards.
examples: text: The first room the people enter was formerly the Presence Chamber, which is hung completely with black, and at the r-end a cloth of estate, with a chair of estate standing upon the Haut-place under the state.
ref: 1824, The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction:
text: The stole is a long scarf-like cloth that hangs around the neck, over the shoulders and down the front of bishops and priests [generally, two-four inches across].
ref: 2004, Robin D. Gill, Topsy-turvy 1585, →ISBN:
text: Wipe the surface with a cloth dampened with mineral spirits in order to remove the sanding dust, then brush on a full coat of varnish.
ref: 2009, Albert Jackson, David Day, Popular Mechanics Complete Home How-to, →ISBN, page 80:
glosses: A piece of cloth used for a particular purpose.
examples: text: . If we look beyond the chaos of each moment, we cannot help seeing that we are but one glorious thread in the cloth of life.
ref: 2001, Sang H. Kim, The Art of Harmony: A Guide to Happiness, →ISBN, page 14:
text: The disparate threads contained are, in the cloth of a religious society, ready to revolutionize the world and bring the Kingdom of Heaven into its full reality on earth.
ref: 2004, Thomas D. Hamm, The Quakers in America, →ISBN, page 124:
text: . The rhythm of life in rural Asia has followed an unchanging pattern from generation to generation and for the chronically poor it is soaked in the cloth of continued deprivation.
ref: 2009, John Malcolm Dowling, Chin-Fang Yap, Chronic Poverty in Asia: Causes, Consequences and Policies, →ISBN:
text: A wrinkle in the cloth of time, a cry of soft caress and fragrant dreams to weld the metal fabric souls in blends so held in high regards across the lands and sky.
ref: 2012, R. Tirrell Leonard Jr., In The Murmuring Trees, →ISBN, page 79:
glosses: Substance or essence; the whole of something complex.
examples: text: Like all cultural realities, contemporary modernism is packed with its own myths, its own largely unrecognized metaphors, its own poetics literally perceived -- or should we say, "misperceived"? -- its own reifications and idiosyncratic distinctions. And it comes to us decorated in the cloth of emancipation, a new freedom that would seem to liberate us from those restraints and bonds that were the excretions of an older mindset, an alien political and social order, a rigid and stultifying hierarchy now perceived as riddled with superstition, arbitrary premise, and false conjunction — in contrast, of course, to the liberated mindset that bespeaks our own age!
ref: 2002, Patricia L. Munhall, Ed Madden, Virginia Macken Fitzsimons, The Emergence of Man Into the 21st Century, →ISBN, page 407:
text: Unbelievably, he smiled through his cracked and bleeding lips. A horrible nightmare cloaked in the cloth of good.
ref: 2007, Kathy Steffen, First, There Is a River, →ISBN:
text: Not until rehabilitation was wrapped in the cloth of wartime patriotism—a program billed as necessary for the welfare of disabled soldiers—did it receive overwhelming congressional support.
ref: 2011, Beth Linker, War's Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America, →ISBN, page 148:
text: After being at your beck and call all these years, he wants a woman, not the consummate teen-ager pretending she's a grownup wrapping her flesh in the cloth of her church.
ref: 2014, Shara Russell, In the Shadow of Faith, →ISBN:
glosses: Appearance; seeming.
examples: text: But he could not come in the white cloth of celebration to a burial service, and he could hardly come in the cloth of mourning to celebrate his two decades on the stool.
ref: 1993, Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture, →ISBN, page 185:
text: Wearing the cloth of kings would seem to be an appropriate symbol.
ref: 2004, Alison Dundes Renteln, The Cultural Defense, →ISBN, page 151:
text: Occasionally the most fortunate found a jewel, a golden-encrusted dagger, a ring, or some other precious gem which decorated the cloths of glory the Persian chieftains and satraps wore.
ref: 2013, Paul Doherty, The House of Death, →ISBN:
text: The Old Testament Ministers of God, Aaron and his sons, who were the priests, wore special 'cloths of service.' They were dressed in 'holy garments' so that they could stand and offer in the Presence of God, being beautified by them and being enabled through them to perform their sacred duties.
ref: 2016, Stephen John Goundry, Hot Coals of Fire: The Sanctity of the Ministry, →ISBN:
glosses: A form of attire that represents a particular profession or status.
examples: text: He is a respected man of the cloth.
text: As someone who finds clear shouts of lively encouragement easier to identify than the “still small voice of calm”, like the prairie rodent I scurried off to various members of the cloth to ask how they ascertained their calling.
ref: 2025 June 20, Josephine Gabelman, “Differentiating between career progression and God’s call”, in Church Times:
glosses: The priesthood.
Synonyms: sense: woven fabric
word: material
sense: woven fabric
word: stuff
Derived terms: Aida cloth
airplane cloth
altar cloth
altar-cloth
American cloth
backcloth
back-cloth
back-cloth star
barkcloth
barmcloth
bolting cloth
book-cloth
brattice cloth
breech-cloth
breechcloth
broadcloth
cerecloth
charcloth
cheesecloth
chincloth
clothback
clothbound
cloth cap
cloth-eared
cloth-ears
clothed
cloth hall
clothhead
clothier
clothify
clothism
clothless
clothlike
clothmaker
clothmaking
cloth nappy
cloth of gold
cloth of tissue
cloth pad
clothwork
clothworker
clothy
clothyard
clot shot
communion cloth
composition cloth
crumbcloth
cut from the same cloth
cut of the same cloth
cut out of the same cloth
cut one's cloth to suit one's purse
cut one's coat according to one's cloth
cut the coat according to the cloth
dishcloth
dish cloth
dish-cloth
doublecloth
drabcloth
draw the cloth
dropcloth
drop cloth
dustcloth
dust cloth
emery cloth
empress cloth
facecloth
face cloth
floorcloth
focusing cloth
focussing cloth
footcloth
forecloth
grasscloth
Greencloth
green cloth
groundcloth
haircloth
handcloth
hardware cloth
headcloth
hearsecloth
Henrietta cloth
hindcloth
horsecloth
housecloth
ironing cloth
Italian cloth
Janus cloth
J-cloth
kente cloth
knight of the green cloth
lady's cloth
leathercloth
lee cloth
loincloth
lot-cloth split
man of the cloth
match-cloth
microcloth
monkscloth
mort cloth
mudcloth
mummy cloth
narrow cloth
neckcloth
neck-cloth
nettlecloth
nettle cloth
nightcloth
oilcloth
overcloth
packcloth
pad cloth
pagri cloth
paper-cloth
pilot cloth
pincloth
poodle cloth
pressing cloth
race cloth
rick cloth
rune cloth
sackcloth
saddlecloth
saddle-cloth
sailcloth
sealskin cloth
shade cloth
shake a cloth in the wind
shaving cloth
silvercloth
skycloth
space cloth
spider cloth
sponge cloth
sweat-cloth
tablecloth
table cloth
table-cloth
take the cloth
teacloth
tea cloth
terry cloth
Thibet cloth
toilet cloth
topcloth
touch cloth
traycloth
undercloth
union cloth
vellum cloth
Venetian cloth
waistcloth
washcloth
waxcloth
weather cloth
whole cloth
out of whole cloth
winding cloth
wire cloth
woman of the cloth
zephyr cloth
Related terms: clothe
clothes
clothing