lint

[lint]

noun

1. minute shreds or ravelings of yarn; bits of thread.

2. staple cotton fiber used to make yarn.

3. cotton waste produced by the ginning process.

4. a soft material for dressing wounds, procured by scraping or otherwise treating linen cloth.

lint

/ lɪnt /

noun

1. an absorbent cotton or linen fabric with the nap raised on one side, used to dress wounds, etc

2. shreds of fibre, yarn, etc

3. staple fibre for making cotton yarn

Other Word Forms

• linty adjective
• lintless adjective
• delint verb (used with object)

Word History and Origins

Origin of lint¹

1325–75; Middle English, variant of linnet; compare Middle French linette linseed, Old English līnet- flax (or flax-field) in līnetwige lintwhite

Word History and Origins

Origin of lint¹

C14: probably from Latin linteus made of linen, from līnum flax

Example Sentences

In any case, Biden allies “who voiced fears were flicked away like lint.”

Read more on Los Angeles Times

He has been but a speck of lint on the Lakers’ lapel, a bit of dust at the end of the Lakers’ bench, a small and irrelevant bystander in the Lakers’ long and arduous journey.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

On the fifth floor, inspectors said, inmates were triple-bunked in a hot cell block where the air conditioners were filled with lint.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

As he put it, “The speed of light is never going to go out of style. Gravity, lint, signs, time itself, is not going to go out of style.”

Read more on Salon

To the untrained eye, it looks like a speck of black lint, not much larger than the tip of a pin.

Read more on New York Times

Related Words

• cord 
• cotton 
• filament 
• silk 
• strand 
• string 
• wire 
• wool 
• yarn