Nylon

How to spell nylon

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce nylon

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nylon mean?

1. nounA strong, lightweight synthetic material used for fabrics, ropes, and many moulded parts.

Nylon in a sentence

• The tent was made of waterproof nylon that dried within minutes.

• Climbers trust nylon rope because it stretches slightly under a heavy load.

Where does nylon come from?

Language of origin: Other

Nylon was coined in 1938 by the American chemical company DuPont as the trade name for the first commercially successful synthetic polymer fibre, developed by the chemist Wallace Carothers and his team. Unlike most English words, it does not descend from any Latin, Greek, or older root; it was an invented name with no original meaning, and DuPont chose it partly because it was short, distinctive, and easy to say. A popular but false story claims it stands for 'New York' and 'London', and another that it mocks Japanese silk; neither is true, and the company itself stated the syllables were essentially arbitrary, with the ending '-on' borrowed from existing fibre names such as cotton and rayon. The word entered everyday English almost overnight when nylon stockings went on sale in 1940 and became enormously popular. Because it is a manufactured word with no etymological logic, the spelling simply has to be memorised: a single 'y', not an 'i'.

How the word is built

• nylon (a coined trade name, not built from meaningful prefix or root parts)