Loom

How to spell loom

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce loom

What does loom mean?

1. verbTo appear as a large, vague, or threatening shape, or to seem imminent and worrying.
2. nounA frame or machine used for weaving thread or yarn into cloth.

Loom in a sentence

• verb

  Deadlines always seem to loom larger at the end of the quarter.

• noun

  The museum displayed a wooden loom from the cotton mills.

• verb

  Storm clouds began to loom over the harbour.

• noun

  She threaded the warp carefully across the loom.

Where does loom come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This single spelling actually covers two words with separate histories. The noun for the weaving frame comes from the Old English geloma, meaning simply 'a tool' or 'an implement'; over time it narrowed to mean the specific apparatus used for weaving cloth, with the unstressed first syllable wearing away to leave just 'loom'. The verb, meaning to appear indistinctly and often menacingly, is harder to trace and probably entered English in the 1500s from a Low German or Scandinavian source related to words for slow movement and looming shapes seen at sea. Sailors used it of land or vessels rising dimly on the horizon, and that nautical flavour of something large emerging from haze still colours the modern sense. The two meanings simply happen to have collapsed into the same four letters, which makes 'loom' a tidy example of words converging in spelling rather than in origin.

How the word is built

• loom (single root; the weaving-machine noun from Old English geloma 'tool'; the verb of unrelated origin)