muslin

From French mousseline, from Italian mussolina, from Mussolo (“Mosul”), that is Mosul in northern Iraq (compare 1875 Knight, Edward H., Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary, V2 p1502: "Muslins are so called from Moussol in India.")

• IPA^(key): /ˈmʌz.lɪn/

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muslin (usually uncountable, plural muslins)

1. (textile) Any of several varieties of thin cotton cloth.
   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter 11:

     ... my pupils leave off their thick shoes and tight old tartan pelisses, and wear silk stockings and muslin frocks, as fashionable baronets' daughters should.

   • 1875, Edward H. Knight, Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary, Vol.2 p.1502:

     A bleached or unbleached thin white cotton cloth, unprinted and undyed. [Nineteen varieties are thereafter listed.]

   • 1906, Stanley J[ohn] Weyman, chapter I, in Chippinge Borough, New York, N.Y.: McClure, Phillips & Co., OCLC 580270828, page 01:

     It was April 22, 1831, and a young man was walking down Whitehall in the direction of Parliament Street. He wore shepherd's plaid trousers and the swallow-tail coat of the day, with a figured muslin cravat wound about his wide-spread collar.

2. (US) Fabric made of cotton, flax (linen), hemp, or silk, finely or coarsely woven.
   • 1875, Edward H. Knight, Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary, Vol.2 pp.1502−3:

     Other very different styles of fabric are now indifferently called muslins, and the term is used differently on the respective sides of the Atlantic.

3. Any of a wide variety of tightly-woven thin fabrics, especially those used for bedlinen.
4. (US) Woven cotton or linen fabrics, especially when used for items other than garments.
5. (countable) A dressmaker's pattern made from inexpensive cloth for fitting.
6. Any of several different moths.

• butter muslin
• See muslin in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

• muslin at OneLook Dictionary Search
• muslin in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

• Sumlin, ulmins, unslim