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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

cloth.

A fabric, usually made of woven, knitted, or felted fibres or filaments, such as used in dressing, decorating, cleaning or other practical use. Sometimes, woven fabric specifically.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/klɒθ/Received-Pronunciation/klɔːθ/archaic, Received-Pronunciation/klɔθ/Australia, British, Scotland, Southern, Standard/klɔθ/

  1. A fabric, usually made of woven, knitted, or felted fibres or filaments, such as used in dressing, decorating, cleaning or other practical use. Sometimes, woven fabric specifically.

    countable · uncountable

  2. Specifically, a tablecloth, especially as spread before a meal or removed afterwards.

    countable · uncountable

  3. A piece of cloth used for a particular purpose.

    countable

  4. Substance or essence; the whole of something complex.

    countable · figuratively · uncountable

  5. Appearance; seeming.

    countable · figuratively · uncountable

  6. A form of attire that represents a particular profession or status.

    countable · uncountable

  7. The priesthood.

    countable · idiomatic · uncountable · with-definite-article
    He is a respected man of the cloth.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English cloth, clath, from Old English clāþ (“cloth, clothes, covering, sail”), from Proto-West Germanic *klaiþ, from Proto-Germanic *klaiþą (“garment”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *gleyt- (“to cling to, cleave, stick”) (compare Albanian ngjit (“to stick, attach, glue”)), a form of *gleh₁y- (“to smear; to stick”). Cognate with Scots clath (“cloth”), North Frisian klaid (“dress, garment”), Saterland Frisian Klood (“dress, apparel”), West Frisian klaad, kleed (“cloth, article of clothing”), Dutch kleed (“robe, dress”), Low German kleed (“dress, garment”), German Kleid (“gown, dress”), Danish klæde (“cloth, dress”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk klede, Swedish kläde (“cloth”), Icelandic klæði (“cloth, dressing”), Old English clīþan (“to adhere, stick”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.