Sheet

How to spell sheet

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sheet

What does sheet mean?

1. nounA thin, flat, broad piece of a material such as paper, metal, or glass.
2. nounA large rectangular piece of cloth used as a layer of bedding.

Sheet in a sentence

• She printed the report on a single sheet of paper.

• He changed the bottom sheet before the guests arrived.

• The roofer fixed a corrugated sheet of metal over the shed.

• The laundry basket was full of damp towels and one cotton sheet.

Where does sheet come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word descending from the Old English scēte (also written scȳte), meaning a piece of cloth, a covering, or a length of linen. It belongs to a wider Germanic family and is closely related to scēat, an Old English word for a corner, lap, or projecting piece, and the underlying sense is something that shoots out or projects, linking it to the same root that gives us 'shoot'. From the early meaning of a broad cloth, the word naturally widened to cover any thin, flat, broad expanse, so a sheet of paper, a sheet of glass, and a sheet of ice all carry that same idea of a flat, extended surface. The nautical sense, the rope that controls the angle of a sail, comes from the same scēat root by way of the corner of the sail it was once attached to. Because the spelling has a simple double 'ee', it has stayed phonetically regular and rarely troubles adult writers.

How the word is built

• sheet (from Old English scēte: a piece of cloth)
• no affixes