lawn

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:

lawn

Wikipedia

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /lɔːn/
• (US) IPA^(key): /lɔn/
  • (cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /lɑn/

  • Audio (US)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔːn

Etymology 1

Early Modern English laune (“turf, grassy area”), alteration of laund (“glade”), from Middle English launde, from Old French lande (“heath, moor”), of Germanic or Gaulish origin, from Proto-Germanic *landą (“land”) or Proto-Celtic *landā, both from Proto-Indo-European *lendʰ- (“land, heath”).

Akin to Breton lann (“heath”), Old Norse & Old English land. Doublet of land and lande.

Noun

lawn (countable and uncountable, plural lawns)

1. (England, historical or regional) An open space between woods.
2. Ground (generally in front of or around a house) covered with grass kept closely mown.
   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path […]. It twisted and turned, […] and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn. And, back of the lawn, was a big, old-fashioned house, with piazzas stretching in front of it, and all blazing with lights. 'Twas the house I'd seen the roof of from the beach.

3. (biology) An overgrown agar culture, such that no separation between single colonies exists.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

lawn (third-person singular simple present lawns, present participle lawning, simple past and past participle lawned)

1. (transitive) To furnish with a lawn.
   • 1827, An Historical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Account of Kirkstall Abbey, page 170:

     By opening all the arches of the several apartments […] , by lawning the area within, and by a judicious use of ivy where any blank spaces require to be broken, or any deformities concealed, this might be made a beautiful and singular scene; […]

Etymology 2

Apparently from Laon, a French town known for its linen manufacturing, from Old French Lan, from Latin Laudunum, a Celtic name cognate with Lugdunum.

Noun

lawn (countable and uncountable, plural lawns)

1. (uncountable) A type of thin linen or cotton.
   • 1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “Of the Inhabitants of Lilliput; ”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. , volume I, London: Benj Motte, , →OCLC, part I (A Voyage to Lilliput), pages 107–108:

     Two hundred Sempſtreſſes were employed to make me Shirts, and Linen for Bed and Table, all of the ſtrongeft and coarſeſt kind they could get; which, however, they were forced to quilt together in ſeveral Folds, for the thickeſt was ſome degrees finer than Lawn.

   • 1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, New York, N.Y.: Modern Library, →OCLC:

     The stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death robe.

   • 1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Penguin, published 2011, page 144:

     He looked through the glass at the fire, set it down on the end of the desk and wiped his lips with a sheer lawn handkerchief.

2. (in the plural) Pieces of this fabric, especially as used for the sleeves of a bishop.
3. (countable, obsolete) A piece of clothing made from lawn.
   • 1910, Margaret Hill McCarter, The Price of the Prairie:

     […] she was as the wild yoncopin to the calla lily. Marjie knew how to dress. To-day, shaded by the buggy-top, in her dainty light blue lawn, with the soft pink of her cheeks and her clear white brow and throat, she was a most delicious thing […]

Translations

References

• “lawn”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• WLAN, nawl

Welsh

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /lau̯n/

Adjective

lawn

1. Soft mutation of llawn.

Adverb

lawn

1. Soft mutation of llawn.

Mutation