flannel

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A soft cloth material originally woven from wool, today often combined with cotton or synthetic fibers.

   With the weather turning colder, it was time to dig out our flannel sheets and nightclothes.

2. 2
   noun

   A washcloth.

   "The Witch of Endor was a fool to her, sir: bless you, she would make no more of raising every gentleman in the Bible out of these here beastly tombs than I should of growing cress on an old flannel.".

3. 3
   noun

   Soothing, plausible untruth or half-truth; claptrap.

   Don't talk flannel!

4. 4
   verb

   To waffle or prevaricate.

   I got a little cross and asked him to stop flannelling and to tell me what was holding me back. Were my annual assessments below par? Was there something I had done – or not done?

From Middle English flaunneol, from Anglo-Norman flanelle (compare Norman flianné), diminutive of Old French flaine, floene (“coarse wool”), from Gaulish, from Proto-Celtic *wlānos, *wlanā (“wool”) (compare Welsh gwlân, Breton gloan), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂wĺ̥h₁neh₂. More at wool.

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