Sash

How to spell sash

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sash

What does sash mean?

1. nounA decorative strip of cloth worn round the waist or over one shoulder.
2. nounThe framed part of a window holding the glass, especially one that slides up and down.

Sash in a sentence

• The bride tied a wide silk sash around her waist.

• The old sash stuck halfway and would not slide shut.

• The mayor wore a ceremonial sash across his chest at the parade.

• The carpenter replaced the rotten timber sash with a new one.

Where does sash come from?

Language of origin: Arabic

Sash entered English in the early 1600s from the Arabic word shash, which referred to fine muslin or to the strip of fabric wound into a turban. English travellers and traders encountered the cloth in the Near East and first wrote the word as 'shash' or 'shashe', describing the length of material draped or wound around the body. Over the 1600s the pronunciation and spelling settled into 'sash', and the meaning narrowed to a decorative band worn round the waist or across the chest. By the late 1600s a quite separate sense appeared, the glazed wooden frame of a window that slides up and down; this is generally thought to be an altered borrowing of the French chassis 'frame', reshaped to look like the familiar word sash. That double history is why one short word covers both ribbons and windows.

How the word is built

• sash (single root; from Arabic shash 'muslin, turban cloth')