Serge

How to spell serge

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce serge

What does serge mean?

1. nounA strong twilled woollen cloth with a diagonal weave, used for suits, coats, and uniforms.

Serge in a sentence

• The tailor cut the navy serge for a winter suit.

• His old school uniform was made of itchy grey serge.

Where does serge come from?

Language of origin: French

This word travelled into English from the Old French sarge or serge, the name for a sturdy woollen cloth, which in turn came from the Latin serica, meaning 'silken stuff' or 'fabrics of silk'. The Latin word reaches back to the Greek serikos, 'silken', which itself derived from Seres, the name the ancient Greeks and Romans gave to the people of the Far East from whom silk was first traded; the Seres were almost certainly the Chinese. So although serge today names a hard-wearing twilled wool used for suits and uniforms, its name literally points back to silk and to a distant land of silk producers. English adopted it in the fourteenth century. Its spelling trap is purely aural: it sounds identical to 'surge', yet the fabric keeps the 'er' spelling inherited from its French and Latin roots.

How the word is built

• serge (a whole word from Latin serica 'silken material'; no separable affixes)