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.
Five years ago, they began filming themselves pulling thick, fluffy blankets of lint from screens the size of baking sheets, sometimes finding tiny treasures like coins or plastic toys.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 19, 2026
Thirteen billion dollars, beaten by a lint trap.
From MarketWatch ● May 21, 2026
Gravity, lint, signs, time itself, is not going to go out of style.
From Salon ● May 22, 2024
To the untrained eye, it looks like a speck of black lint, not much larger than the tip of a pin.
From New York Times ● May 10, 2024
She fished another ball of gum from her jeans pocket and scraped the lint off with her thumbnail before elaborately popping it into her mouth.
From "The Great Gilly Hopkins" by Katherine Paterson
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