Floss

How to spell floss

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce floss

What does floss mean?

1. nounA thin cord of filaments used to clean between the teeth.
2. verbTo clean between the teeth using a thin cord.
3. nounLoosely spun silk or cotton thread used in embroidery.

Floss in a sentence

• noun

  The dentist handed her a small spool of floss on the way out.

• verb

  He tries to floss every night before bed.

• noun

  She sorted the embroidery floss by colour before starting the design.

• noun

  A roll of mint floss sat next to the toothbrush.

• verb

  The hygienist urged him to floss as well as brush.

• noun

  Each skein of floss is made of six separable strands.

Where does floss come from?

Language of origin: French

Floss most likely comes from the French floche, meaning a tuft or wisp of silk, which traces back to the Latin floccus, a 'tuft of wool'. When it entered English in the eighteenth century it described the soft, loose silky threads found in a silkworm's cocoon or surrounding a plant's seeds. From that idea of fine, untwisted fibre came embroidery floss, the loosely spun thread used in needlework, and later the slender cord for cleaning between the teeth that gives us the modern everyday sense. The verb 'to floss', meaning to clean the teeth with that cord, grew naturally out of the noun in the twentieth century. Because the word is short and phonetically regular, the spelling rarely troubles writers, though the doubled s at the end is the one small thing to remember.

How the word is built

• floss (a single, unbreakable root; from a word for a tuft of fine silk)