lint
/lɪnt
/noun [mass noun]
1Short, fine fibres which separate from the surface of cloth or yarn during processing: some fabrics leave tiny specks of lint on the glass...
- But whereas they were once crisp, motes of dust and household lint had now settled leaving the surface grimy.
- Brush cotton is a fabric that has been brushed to remove lint and other excess fibres to leave the cotton soft and smooth.
- Cover it with a cheesecloth to keep out dust, lint and insects.
1.1Scottish Flax fibres prepared for spinning.
1.2The fibrous material of a cotton boll.South Africa, therefore, only managed to produce about 50 percent, ‘in a good year’, of its annual requirement of 70,000 tonnes of cotton lint....
- A record 1,600 pounds of cotton lint per acre was measured on one plot in 2001.
- Top products exported to 59 export markets within and outside the sub region include copper wires, electrical cables, burley tobacco, sugar and cotton lint.
2A fabric, originally of linen, with a raised nap on one side, used for dressing wounds: he smeared ointment on a strip of lint...
- He covered the wound made with lint soaked in carbolic acid.
- One case, number 11, describes the management of a broken nose, and the treatment, involving rolls of lint within the nostrils and external bandaging, can hardly be bettered even by modern doctors.
Derivatives
linty
- It's not a bad cold, but it's a cold, and this means my brain is covered with a crunchy layer of linty styrofoam packing peanuts.
- He, in other words, still envisions his robots touching the world - the dusty, linty, crumb-crusted bits of it anyway.
- The surfaces are lumpy and clotted, linty with escaping threads, amusingly slapdash.
Origin
Late Middle English lynnet 'flax prepared for spinning', perhaps from Old French linette 'linseed', from lin 'flax'.