Coat

How to spell coat

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce coat

What does coat mean?

1. nounAn outer garment with sleeves, worn over other clothes for warmth or protection.
2. nounA thin covering or layer of a substance spread over a surface.
3. verbTo cover something with a layer of a substance.

Coat in a sentence

• noun

  She hung her wet coat by the radiator to dry.

• noun

  The fence needs a second coat of paint before it dries fully.

• verb

  The recipe says to coat the chicken in seasoned flour.

• noun

  He buttoned his coat against the cold wind on the platform.

• noun

  A thin coat of varnish protected the wooden table.

• verb

  Workers coat the steel beams with rustproof primer.

Where does coat come from?

Language of origin: French

Coat came into English in the 1300s from the Old French word cote, which named a close-fitting tunic or outer garment worn over other clothes. The French term itself traced back to a Frankish (early Germanic) word kotta, meaning a coarse woollen cloak or covering, so the idea of a layer worn on the outside was present from the very beginning. Because the word already meant 'something laid over the body', English speakers easily extended it to any thin layer spread on a surface, giving us a coat of paint or a coat of varnish. The animal sense, an animal's fur or covering, grew from the same notion of an outer layer. The spelling looks simple, but the silent pairing of o and a for a single long vowel is the trap, since the sound could just as plausibly be written with -oe or -oa elsewhere.

How the word is built

• coat (single root from Old French cote, a tunic or garment); no prefix or suffix