rayon

American  

[ray-on] / ˈreɪ ɒn /

noun

• rayons
  plural

1. a regenerated, semisynthetic textile filament made from cellulose, cotton linters, or wood chips by treating these with caustic soda and carbon disulfide and passing the resultant solution, viscose, through spinnerets.

2. fabric made of this filament.

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adjective

1. made of rayon.

rayon British  

/ ˈreɪɒn /

noun

1. any of a number of textile fibres made from wood pulp or other forms of cellulose

2. any fabric made from such a fibre

3. (modifier) consisting of or involving rayon

   a rayon shirt

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• half-rayon
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• rayons
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of rayon

First recorded in 1920–25; apparently based on ray ¹

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

rayon rayons

Recycling textiles can be particularly tricky because a lot of clothing is made from a blend of materials from polyester—which is derived from oil—to cotton, rayon and nylon.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026

It left a scorched black mark on his orange rayon shirt that made him look like a superhero.

From Salon ● Jul. 3, 2026

Inside of her Hawaii room, where Barnett boasts having some of the first-ever rayon Hawaiian shirts, there’s even a closet stockpiled with tiki souvenirs, photos of Elvis Presley and decorative masks.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 2025

It also had splashes of color: a gentle yellow, a rusty orange, a light brown and a mossy green, in the form of rayon fabrics made by Dupont covering the walls.

From New York Times ● Jan. 25, 2024

The young women, sitting in their own clusters on the lawn, wore short- heeled pumps and rayon hose, calf-length skirts, and loose-fitting blouses with ruffles and flounces on the sleeves and at the necklines.

From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown

Even though I don’t have too many ’30s and ’40s, ’50s items, the items that I do have — I love the fabrics, the rayons.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 7, 2022

For Rhodia fabrics, Leuenroth photographed Brazilian models wearing Rhodia clothes in Rome and Tokyo to convince women that Brazilian-made rayons and cottons are as smart as imports.

From Time Magazine Archive

Brown Co. makes a Solka pulp used as raw material for rayons.

From Time Magazine Archive

Velvets, transparent and patterned; chiffons and rayons shot through with metal threads; woolens ingeniously woven through with small wisps of feathers.

From Time Magazine Archive

The rayons of the sun we see   Diminish in their strength; The shade of every tower and tree   Extendit is in length.

From Bulchevy's Book of English Verse by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

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