sheet

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A large piece of thin cloth put on a bed under and over the sleeper.

   Use the clean sheets in the hall closet to make the bed.

2. 2
   noun

   A flat, rectangular piece of paper.

   She tore a fresh sheet of paper from her notebook.

3. 3
   noun

   A thin, flat piece of a solid material.

   The worker cut several panes from a large sheet of glass.

4. 4
   noun

   A wide, flat layer of something covering a surface.

   Overnight the rain froze into a sheet of ice on the road.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Sheet represents two words that were distinct in Old English, although they are ultimately related. The word used for bed coverings, paper, glass, and similar things shares an ancient root with shoot, one sense of which was “to project”; an older use of sheet for a protective covering or awning links these senses. The nautical sheet is a rope attached to a corner of a ship’s sail and used to control the sail’s extent and direction.

From Middle English schete; partly from Old English sċīete (“a sheet, a piece of linen cloth”); partly from Old English sċēata (“a corner, angle; the lower corner of a sail, sheet”); and Old English sċēat (“a corner, angle”); all from Proto-Germanic *skautijǭ, *skautaz (“corner, wedge, lap”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kewd- (“to throw, shoot, pursue, rush”). Cognate with North Frisian skut (“the fold of a garment, lap, coattail”), West Frisian skoat (“sheet; sail; lap”), Dutch schoot (“the fold of a garment, lap, sheet”), German Low German Schote (“a line from the foot of a sail”), German S…

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary