Lawn

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /lɔːn/
• US IPA: /lÉ”n/
• cot-caught IPA: /lÉ‘n/
• Rhymes: -ɔːn

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, akin to Breton lann ("heath")"; Old Norse & Old English land

Full definition of lawn

Noun

1. An open space between woods.
2. Ground (generally in front of or around a house) covered with grass kept closely mown.
• 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, Mr. Pratt's Patients Chapter 1, 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

• lawn mower
• lawned

Apparently from Laon, a town in France known for its linen manufacturing.

Noun

1. (uncountable) A type of thin linen or cotton.
• 1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula:The stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death robe.
• 1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Penguin 2011, p. 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 ...

Anagrams

• WLAN