Embroidery

How to spell embroidery

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce embroidery

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does embroidery mean?

1. nounThe art or product of decorating fabric with patterns sewn in thread.

Embroidery in a sentence

• The cushion covers were finished with delicate gold embroidery.

• She took an evening class in embroidery to learn cross-stitch and satin stitch.

Where does embroidery come from?

Language of origin: French

This word travelled into English from Old French during the 1300s, built on the verb embroder or broder, meaning 'to ornament cloth with raised needlework' or 'to edge'. That French verb is generally traced back to a Frankish (early Germanic) root broezdon, related to the idea of a brim, border, or projecting edge, which is why the underlying sense is of decorating along or upon a surface. The Middle English form was sometimes spelled 'embrouderie', and the silent shaping of those vowels is a clue to why the modern spelling keeps the tricky 'oi' in the middle. Over time the literal sense of decorative stitching also picked up a figurative meaning, 'to embroider a story' coming to mean adding fanciful or exaggerated details. The same broder family lies behind the older craft word 'broider', now largely poetic, which shows how the spelling settled around that 'oid' core rather than a plain 'oy'.

How the word is built

• em- (in, on; from Old French en-)
• broider (to ornament with needlework, from broder)
• -y/-ery (noun suffix forming the activity or its result)