lint
Americannoun
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minute shreds or ravelings of yarn; bits of thread.
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staple cotton fiber used to make yarn.
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cotton waste produced by the ginning process.
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a soft material for dressing wounds, procured by scraping or otherwise treating linen cloth.
noun
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an absorbent cotton or linen fabric with the nap raised on one side, used to dress wounds, etc
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shreds of fibre, yarn, etc
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staple fibre for making cotton yarn
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of lint
1325–75; Middle English, variant of linnet; compare Middle French linette linseed, Old English līnet- flax (or flax-field) in līnetwige lintwhite
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Thirteen billion dollars, beaten by a lint trap.
From MarketWatch ● May 21, 2026
“I can’t tell you how many people think their phone is dead because there is pocket lint in the port,” says Wiens.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 21, 2025
On the fifth floor, inspectors said, inmates were triple-bunked in a hot cell block where the air conditioners were filled with lint.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 2024
Gravity, lint, signs, time itself, is not going to go out of style.
From Salon ● May 22, 2024
If he chanced to meet his mother in the hall, she would not look at him but rather study the fleecy spheres of lint that drifted along the floor in her son’s wake.
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
