wool
/wʊl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.91 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A woolly back; a resident of a satellite town outside Liverpool, such as St Helens or Warrington. See also Yonner.
Derogatory; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "The sheep were caught and plucked, because shears had not yet been invented to cut the wool from the sheep's back."
- "Spielvogel said wet cleaning also has limitations; while it is fine for cottons and fabrics worn in warm climates, he said, it can damage heavy wools or structured clothes like suit jackets."
- "The groundsels have leaves covered in wool for insulation[…"
- "wool of bat and tongue of dog"
- "The object of your affection is the treetop connection / Where basically you love to smoke your wools"
- "He rocked Caesar's chains, he pushed Caesar's Range / Smokin' mad wools all day, with Caesar's change"
Etymology
From Middle English wolle, from Old English wull, from Proto-West Germanic *wullu, from Proto-Germanic *wullō, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂wĺ̥h₁neh₂. Cognates Cognate with Saterland Frisian Wulle, German Low German Wull, Dutch wol, German Wolle, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish ull, Danish uld; also Welsh gwlân, Latin lāna, Lithuanian vi̇̀lna, Russian во́лос (vólos), Slovak vlna, Bulgarian влас (vlas), Albanian lesh (“wool, hair, fleece”). Doublet of lana. 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).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /wʊl/
- British English: /wʊl/
Usage
- Uncountable
- Obsolete
- New Zealand usage
- British usage
- Derogatory
- Slang
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
abb-wool
all cry and no wool
all wool and a yard wide
andalusian wool
angora wool
breech wool
burry wool
cony wool