Napkin
nounA small square of cloth or paper used at meals to protect clothing and wipe the lips and fingers.
How to spell napkin
6 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce napkin
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does napkin mean?
- nounA small square of cloth or paper used at meals to protect clothing and wipe the lips and fingers.
Napkin in a sentence
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She folded a clean napkin beside each dinner plate.
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He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin after the meal.
Where does napkin come from?
Language of origin: French
The word napkin comes from the Old French nappe, meaning 'tablecloth' or 'cloth', which itself descends from the Latin mappa, a 'cloth' or 'napkin' used at the table. English speakers in the late 1300s took the French nape and added the native diminutive ending -kin, giving the literal sense of a 'little cloth'. That same -kin suffix survives in words like lambkin and the surname element in names such as Watkin, where it always carried the idea of smallness. Interestingly, the Latin mappa also gave us the word 'map', because early charts were drawn on cloth. The spelling trap is mostly the unstressed second syllable: the -kin can be misheard, and some writers reach for an unnecessary doubled letter.
How the word is built
- nap (from Old French nappe: tablecloth)
- -kin (diminutive suffix: small)
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