lint

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English linet, also linnet, lenet and lint,^[2][3] and its origin is uncertain.^[3][4] The OED, Barnhart, Hoad and the Oxford Dictionary of English take it as perhaps borrowed from Old French linette, recorded in French only in the sense "linseed" but perhaps wider in Old French,^[3][5][6][7] a diminutive of lin (“flax”), from Latin līnum (“flax, linen”).^[5][8] The Middle English Dictionary, Klein and Merriam-Webster Unabridged derive it instead from Medieval Latin linteum (“a linen sheet”),^[2][9][10] the neuter of Latin linteus (“made of linen”), from līnum;^[9][10] Collins likewise names the Latin adjective,^[11] and the American Heritage Dictionary gives both explanations.^[8] Etymonline calls it "somehow" from the source of Old English līn (“flax”), the ancestor of linen,^[12] and Dictionary.com compares līnet- (“flax, flax field”), in the compound līnetwige (“linnet”).^[13] Weekley and the OED connect it with line in its old sense of flax.^[14][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A soft material for dressing wounds, made by scraping or ravelling linen: about 1400, in a translation of Lanfranc's surgery.^[3][2] Barnhart dates the form linet, in the sense of fleecy material scraped from linen, to 1392, and lint to before 1400.^[5][15] Etymonline gives "flax prepared for spinning" in the late 14th century.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The word was first a material made from flax and linen: flax prepared for spinning, its waste burnt as tinder, and the scraped linen laid on wounds.^[3][12] In Scotland it simply meant flax, the plant (from 1458) and the fibre;^[3][16] Weekley cites Burns's lint-white hair for flaxen hair,^[14] and the English Dialect Dictionary records it from Scotland, Ireland and the north of England.^[16] Johnson (1755) gave two senses, flax and linen scraped into a soft woolly substance to lay on sores.^[17] From 1611, in Cotgrave's dictionary, it was used of fluff of any material,^[3][5] a sense Etymonline says was later felt as American.^[12] Lint also meant netting for fishing nets (1615, now dialect or American),^[3][10] and since 1877 the fibre of the cotton boll separated from the seeds by ginning.^[3][11]

Timeline

• c. 1400 – a soft material made from linen, for dressing wounds.^[3][2]
• 1458 – the flax plant (now Scottish).^[3]
• c. 1480 – flax prepared for spinning.^[3]
• 1611 – fluff of any material.^[3][5]
• 1615 – netting for fishing nets.^[3]
• 1877 – the fibre of the cotton boll.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. Small bits of fibre and fluff that come off cloth and gather on clothes or in a dryer: The black sweater was covered in lint.^[10][11]
2. A soft absorbent material, originally scraped linen, used for dressing wounds.^[10][11][3]
3. (chiefly US) The fibre of the cotton boll, used for spinning yarn.^[11][10][3]
4. (chiefly Scottish) Flax, the plant or its fibre.^[10][3][16]
5. (dialect) The netting of a fishing net.^[10][3]

Verb

1. To shed lint or leave it on a surface.^[10]

Word family

• lintless
• linty
• linter

Related words

• linen
• line
• linseed

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
13. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
14. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
15. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
16. ^ a b c Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
17. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.