English Online Dictionary. What means wool? What does wool mean?
English
Etymology
From Middle English wolle, from Old English wull, from Proto-West Germanic *wullu, from Proto-Germanic *wullō, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂wĺ̥h₁neh₂.
The vowel development u → o → oo is purely graphical. Modern English generally avoids the string ‹wu› in favour of ‹wo›, and the resulting woll was then altered to wool (as supposedly better representing the pronunciation).
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /wʊl/
- (General American) enPR: wo͝ol, IPA(key): /wʊl/, [wʊ̠ɫ], [wɫ̩], [wəl]
- (Scotland, Northern Ireland) IPA(key): /wʉl/
- Rhymes: -ʊl
Noun
wool (usually uncountable, plural wools)
- The hair of the sheep, llama and some other ruminants.
- A cloth or yarn made from such hair.
- Anything with a fibrous texture like that of sheep's wool.
- Hyponyms: cotton wool; wood wool; mineral wool, rockwool, glass wool; wire wool, aluminum wool, brass wool, steel wool
- A fine fiber obtained from the leaves of certain trees, such as firs and pines.
- (obsolete) Short, thick hair, especially when crisped or curled.
- (British, New Zealand) Yarn, including that made from synthetic fibers.
- (Liverpool, derogatory) A woolly back; a resident of a satellite town outside Liverpool, such as St Helens or Warrington. See also Yonner.
- (slang) A marijuana cigarette or cigar laced with crack cocaine.
- Synonyms: wooler, woolie
Hyponyms
- (cloth or yarn): felt, tweed, worsted
Coordinate terms
- (hair of sheep): goathair, horsehair, qiviut
Derived terms
Descendants
- → Japanese: ウール (ūru)
Translations
References
- “wool”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
- “wool”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
- “wool”, in The Right Rhymes, launched 2013.
Further reading
- wool on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
Cornish
Noun
wool
- Soft mutation of gool.
Tlingit
Noun
wool
- hole