Scarves

How to spell scarves

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce scarves

What does scarves mean?

1. nounMore than one scarf; lengths of fabric worn around the neck, head, or shoulders for warmth or decoration.

Scarves in a sentence

• She folded the woollen scarves into the top drawer for winter.

• The shop sold silk scarves in a dozen bright colours.

Where does scarves come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the plural of scarf, a word that English picked up in the mid 1500s. The most likely source is the Old Northern French escarpe, meaning a sash or a sling, which earlier described a pilgrim's scrip, a small bag hung from the neck or shoulder by a strap. That sense of something worn slung across the body gradually narrowed to the band of cloth we now wrap around the neck. The deeper origin is uncertain and probably reaches back into Germanic roots, so its history is not perfectly traceable. The spelling trap lies entirely in the plural: like leaf and leaves or half and halves, scarf turns its final f into a v before the ending, giving scarves rather than the tempting but wrong 'scarfs'.

How the word is built

• scarf (band of fabric)
• -ves (plural formed by changing -f to -ves)