Tweed

How to spell tweed

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tweed

What does tweed mean?

1. nounA rough, sturdy woollen cloth, usually woven in flecked or muted colours and used for warm outer clothing.

Tweed in a sentence

• He wore a heavy tweed jacket against the autumn wind.

• The country tailor specialised in jackets cut from local tweed.

Where does tweed come from?

Language of origin: Other

Tweed is a rough, soft woollen cloth that takes its name from a happy accident of misreading. In Scots, the weaving term 'twill' was pronounced and often written 'tweel', describing the diagonal ribbed pattern of the weave. The story commonly told is that around 1830 a London clerk or merchant misread a Scottish invoice for 'tweels' as 'tweeds', mentally connecting the cloth to the River Tweed, which flows through the Borders weaving districts where the fabric was made. Whether or not that single misreading is literally true, the spelling 'tweed' caught on quickly and the link to the river name made it stick. The word entered general English in the 1840s and has stayed fixed ever since, which is why it is now spelt with a 'd' rather than the older 'tweel'.

How the word is built

• tweed (single root; an altered form of Scots 'tweel', the local pronunciation of 'twill', reinforced by the River Tweed in the Scottish Borders)