Cashmere

How to spell cashmere

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cashmere

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cashmere mean?

1. nounA fine, soft wool obtained from goats, used to make luxurious garments and cloth.

Cashmere in a sentence

• She packed a grey cashmere sweater for the cold flight home.

• The boutique charged a premium for every cashmere scarf in the window.

Where does cashmere come from?

Language of origin: Sanskrit

Cashmere is a place name that turned into a fabric name. It comes from Kashmir, the mountainous region between India and Pakistan where the soft underwool of certain goats was traditionally gathered and woven into fine shawls. English borrowed the term in the late 1600s and through the 1700s, first writing it in various forms before settling on the spelling 'cashmere' for the wool and the cloth, while keeping 'Kashmir' for the geographic region itself. The original Sanskrit-derived name of the valley was reshaped by European traders who valued the luxurious shawls that arrived through trade routes. That split spelling is the modern trap: the fabric is 'cashmere' with a 'c' and '-mere', not the place 'Kashmir'. The same prized fibre gives us the related shawl tradition, and the word now signals luxury wherever it appears on a clothing label.

How the word is built

• cashmere (from Kashmir, the Himalayan region)
• no affixes; a place name that became a fabric noun