Clothing

How to spell clothing

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce clothing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does clothing mean?

1. nounGarments worn on the body, considered collectively.

Clothing in a sentence

• Warm clothing is essential for the winter hike.

• The charity collects donated clothing for families in need.

Where does clothing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English noun 'clath', which simply meant a piece of woven fabric or a covering, the same ancestor that gives us the modern word 'cloth'. To this base was added the suffix '-ing', which in this case forms a collective noun describing garments as a whole rather than the action of an event. The form 'clothing' is recorded in Middle English by the 1200s, meaning the garments worn on the body. The root belongs to the broad Germanic family, with cousins in other northern European languages, though its very earliest origin is uncertain. A useful spelling note is that the long 'o' sound comes straight from 'cloth' with its vowel lengthened, and the silent pattern of 'th' before '-ing' simply carries the original 'cloth' intact.

How the word is built

• cloth (from Old English clath: a covering of woven fabric)
• -ing (noun suffix forming a collective term)