Silky

How to spell silky

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce silky

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does silky mean?

1. adjectiveSmooth, soft, and lustrous in the way that silk feels or looks.

Silky in a sentence

• The new conditioner left her hair feeling remarkably silky.

• The sauce had a silky texture once the butter melted in.

Where does silky come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This adjective is built on the noun silk, which comes from the Old English seoloc or sioloc, a word for the fine thread spun by silkworms and the cloth woven from it. The Old English form is thought to descend from a Slavic or Baltic borrowing of the Greek Seres, the ancient name for the people of eastern Asia from whom silk first reached the West along the trade routes. The -y suffix is the ordinary native English ending that turns a noun into an adjective meaning 'resembling' or 'full of', as in 'rocky' or 'cloudy'. So silky literally means 'like silk', and by extension smooth, soft, and lustrous to the touch. The word has been used in this descriptive sense since the 1500s, and it keeps the simple spelling of silk plus a single -y.

How the word is built

• silk (from Old English seoloc: silk)
• -y (adjective suffix: having the quality of)