wool
Plural: wools
Noun
- The dense, soft hair forming the coat of sheep and other mammals.
- a fabric made from the hair of sheep
- fiber sheared from animals (such as sheep) and twisted into yarn for weaving
- outer coat of especially sheep and yaks
- The hair of the sheep, llama and some other ruminants.
- A cloth or yarn made from such hair.
- Anything with a fibrous texture like that of sheep's wool.
- A fine fiber obtained from the leaves of certain trees, such as firs and pines.
- Short, thick hair, especially when crisped or curled.
- Yarn, including that made from synthetic fibers.
- A woolly back; a resident of a satellite town outside Liverpool, such as St Helens or Warrington. See also Yonner.
- A marijuana cigarette or cigar laced with crack cocaine.
Examples
- He strategically played WOOL, linking it to an ’L’ for extra points.
Origin / 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, Norwegian ull; 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).
Scrabble Score: 7
wool: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordwool: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
wool: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary