flax

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A plant with blue flowers, grown for its seeds and for the fibers used to make linen.

   The fields of flax turned the hillside blue.

2. 2
   noun

   The fibers of the flax plant, woven into linen cloth.

   The thread was spun from flax.

From Middle English flax, from Old English fleax, from Proto-Germanic *flahsą, from Proto-Indo-European *pleḱ- (“to plait”). Cognate with Old Frisian flax, Dutch vlas, Old High German flahs (German Flachs); the Northern Germanic (and most likely the Gothic too) stem is different.

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