blanket
Meanings
- A heavy, loosely woven fabric, usually large and woollen, used for warmth while sleeping or resting.
- A covering layer of anything.
- A thick rubber mat used in the offset printing process to transfer ink from the plate to the paper being printed.
- A streak or layer of blubber in whales.
- General; covering or encompassing everything.
- To cover with, or as if with, a blanket.
- To traverse or complete thoroughly.
- To toss in a blanket by way of punishment.
- To take the wind out of the sails of (another vessel) by sailing to windward of it.
- To nullify the impact of (someone or something).
- Of a radio signal: to override or block out another radio signal.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English blanket, blonket, blaunket, from Old Northern French blanket, blancet (“white horse", also "white woollen cloth or flannel; a type of jacket”, literally “that which is white”) (whence Modern French blanchet), diminutive of blanc (“white”), of Germanic origin (compare Old English blanca (“white horse”); see more at blank). Furthermore, the sense "white woollen cloth" is likely a calque of Old English hwītel (“blanket; cloak, mantle”), from Old English hwīt (“white”) + -el (diminutive suffix). Compare also Old Norse hvítill (“a white bed-cover, sheet”), Norwegian kvitel (“blanket”). Compare also blunket, plunket. Displaced native Middle English whytel, from Old English hwītel (whence Modern English whittle (“blanket, cloak, shawl”)).