Towel
nounA piece of absorbent cloth or paper used for drying or wiping.
How to spell towel
5 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce towel
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does towel mean?
- nounA piece of absorbent cloth or paper used for drying or wiping.
- verbTo dry or wipe something or someone using a cloth.
Towel in a sentence
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noun
She wrapped her wet hair in a clean towel after the shower.
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verb
She helped towel the dog dry after its muddy walk.
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noun
He kept a spare towel in the gym bag for the pool.
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verb
The swimmers stopped to towel themselves off at the poolside.
Where does towel come from?
Language of origin: French
Towel came into English in the 1200s from the Old French toaille or toaile, meaning a cloth for wiping or drying. Although it reached us through French, the deeper root is Germanic: the Frankish form thwahlja and the related Old High German dwahila both descend from a Proto-Germanic verb meaning 'to wash'. So at heart a towel is simply 'a thing you wash with'. The same washing root survives in German waschen and in the old word for a washbasin, and it explains why a towel has always been tied to the idea of cleaning rather than mere drying. The modern spelling keeps that soft -el ending from the French, which is why writers sometimes hesitate between the single -wel and an imagined double letter.
How the word is built
- towel (a single root borrowed whole; from Old French toaille, with no productive prefix or suffix)
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