Irons

How to spell irons

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce irons

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does irons mean?

1. nounMore than one flat-bottomed appliance heated to press creases out of cloth.
2. nounGolf clubs with angled metal heads, used for shots of varying distance.
3. nounMetal restraints fastened on a prisoner's wrists or ankles.
4. verbPresses cloth smooth with a heated appliance (third-person singular).

Irons in a sentence

• noun

  The hotel laundry kept three irons running all afternoon.

• noun

  A full set of irons filled the bottom of his golf bag.

• noun

  The prisoner was kept in irons throughout the long transfer.

• verb

  He irons his work shirts every Sunday evening.

• noun

  Modern steam irons heat up far faster than the older models.

• noun

  She replaced her worn irons with a lighter graphite set.

Where does irons come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word descends from Old English 'isern' or 'iren', the native name for the grey metal, and it shares a common Germanic ancestor with Dutch 'ijzer' and German 'Eisen'. Scholars suspect the Germanic word was itself borrowed in very early times from a Celtic source, which is why the origin is reasonably but not perfectly certain. Over the centuries the metal's name was attached to objects made from it, so a heated pressing tool, a golf club with a metal head, and the metal restraints clamped on a prisoner all came to be called 'irons'. The plural and verb form simply adds '-s', giving the appliance count, the set of clubs, and the action of pressing cloth. The tricky part for spellers is the silent sound: the written 'iron' is pronounced roughly 'eye-urn', so the 'r' and 'o' sit in an order the ear would never guess.

How the word is built

• iron (from Old English isen/iren: the metal)
• -s (plural noun / third-person verb suffix)