Plaid

How to spell plaid

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce plaid

What does plaid mean?

1. nounA pattern or cloth of crossed horizontal and vertical bands in two or more colours, resembling tartan.
2. nounA long piece of tartan cloth worn over the shoulder as part of traditional Scottish Highland dress.

Plaid in a sentence

• He bought a red plaid shirt for the camping trip.

• The piper wore a kilt with a tartan plaid pinned at the shoulder.

• The sofa was covered in a faded green plaid throw.

• The museum displayed an antique plaid once draped across a clan chief.

Where does plaid come from?

Language of origin: Celtic

This word comes from the Scottish Gaelic plaide, which meant a blanket or a length of woollen cloth. In the Scottish Highlands the plaide was a large piece of cloth, usually woven in a crossed pattern of coloured stripes, that was draped over the shoulder as part of traditional dress, so the name of the garment gradually attached itself to the criss-cross pattern of the weave. English picked the word up in the 1500s, keeping a spelling that reflects its Gaelic shape rather than its sound, which is exactly why the 'ai' is pronounced as a short 'a' and trips writers up. Over time, especially in North America, plaid came to mean any checked or tartan-style pattern, not just the shoulder cloth itself. The original sense of a worn garment survives in descriptions of Highland costume, where the plaid is still the cloth slung across the body.

How the word is built

• plaid (single root, from Scottish Gaelic plaide: a blanket); no prefix or suffix