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flannel

noun · adjective · verb

Simple meaning

Trousers made of flannel or gabardine or tweed or white cloth.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

flanuhl

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈflænəl

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. usually in the plural

    Trousers made of flannel or gabardine or tweed or white cloth

  2. uncountable

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

  3. uscountable

    A flannel shirt.

  4. new zealandbritishcountable

    A washcloth.

adjective

  1. Made of flannel.

verb

  1. transitive

    To flatter; to suck up to.

  2. transitiveslang

    To waffle or prevaricate.

  3. transitive

    To rub with a flannel.

  4. transitive

    To wrap in flannel.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
C1 · Advanced (estimated)
Frequency
Uncommon
Formality
Technical

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Trousers made of flannel or gabardine or tweed or white cloth

Used this way, flannel is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Trousers / made

gray flannelwhite flannelgrey flannel

Soft

cotton flannel

Other combinations

flannel shirtred flannelflannel suitflannel board

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • flannel-cakenounCompound term

    A flat cake of thin batter fried on both sides on a griddle.

  • flannel leafnounCompound term

    Any of various plants of the genus Verbascum having large usually woolly leaves and terminal spikes of yellow or white or purplish flowers.

  • flannel mulleinnounCompound term

    Tall-stalked very woolly mullein with densely packed yellow flowers.

  • flannel bushnounCompound term

    Any of several handsome evergreen shrubs of California and northern Mexico having downy lobed leaves and showy yellow flowers.

  • canton flannelnounCompound term

    A stout cotton fabric with nap on only one side.

  • cotton flannelnounCompound term

    A stout cotton fabric with nap on only one side.

Related Words

Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: trousers made of flannel or gabardine or tweed

white

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.