flannel

• flannen (dialectal)
• flanan, flanning, flanen (Scotland)

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.

• IPA^(key): /ˈflænəl/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ænəl
• Hyphenation: flan‧nel

flannel (countable and uncountable, plural flannels)

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

   Coordinate term: tartan

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

   • 2012 November 15, Tom Lamont, “How Mumford & Sons became the biggest band in the world”, in The Daily Telegraph‎^[1]:

     First singer and guitarist Marcus Mumford, wearing a black suit, then bassist Ted Dwane, in leather bomber and T-shirt. Next bearded banjo player Winston Marshall, his blue flannel shirt hanging loose, and pianist Ben Lovett, wrapped in a woollen coat.

2. (New Zealand, British, countable) A washcloth.
   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

     "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. (US, countable) A flannel shirt.
4. (slang, uncountable) Soothing, plausible untruth or half-truth; claptrap.

   Don't talk flannel!

• ⇒ Chinese: 法蘭絨／法兰绒 (fǎlánróng)
• → Danish: flannel
• → French: flanelle
  • → Catalan: franel·la
  • → Dutch: flanel
    • Afrikaans: flanel
  • → German: Flanell
    • → Danish: flonel
  • → Italian: flanella
  • → Luxembourgish: Flanell
  • → Portuguese: flanela
  • → Spanish: franela
    • → Tagalog: pranela
    • → Egyptian Arabic: فنلّة
  • → Swedish: flanell
• → Japanese: フランネル (furaneru)

flannel (not comparable)

1. Made of flannel.

flannel (third-person singular simple present flannels, present participle flanneling or flannelling, simple past and past participle flanneled or flannelled)

1. (transitive) To rub with a flannel.
2. (transitive) To wrap in flannel.
3. (transitive) To flatter; to suck up to.
4. (transitive, slang) To waffle or prevaricate.
   • 2016, J. F. Langer, From the Spitfire Cockpit to the Cabinet Office:

     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?

• fannell

From English flannel. Cognate to flonel and to Welsh gwlân (“wool”).

flannel

1. soft, slightly scratched woven fabric made of wool

• “flannel” in Den Danske Ordbog