wool
- 1The hair that grows on sheep, llamas, and some other ruminant animals.
The wool on a merino sheep is prized for its fineness.
Llamas produce a wool that is lighter and warmer than a sheep's coat.
Similarfleece
Note
The animal sense the others extend from, descended from Middle English wolle and Old English wull, with close kin in Dutch wol, German Wolle and Norwegian ull. It is usually a mass noun: a sheep grows wool, not a wool. Nigel Guy Wilson's Ancient Greece (2006) describes sheep being caught and plucked because shears had not yet been invented, so the fleece was pulled rather than cut.
- 2Cloth or yarn manufactured from the hair of sheep or similar animals.
The coat was woven from heavy wool that kept out the rain.
Merino wool feels softer against the skin than coarser varieties.
Note
Cloth is where the mass noun learns to count. Wools in the plural are kinds of fabric. Mireya Navarro, writing in 2009 about dry cleaning, reports that wet cleaning can damage heavy wools. For knitting yarn the word usually stays uncountable, and in Britain and New Zealand it stretches further still, to yarn of any fiber.
- 3Material having a soft, tangled, fibrous texture resembling that of sheep's wool.
Steel wool works well for removing baked-on grime.
The attic was lined with glass wool to reduce heat loss.
Note
Here the word names a texture rather than a source, as in steel wool and glass wool. Botanists use it for the felted hairs on leaves: Anthony Julian Huxley's Plant and Planet (1975) describes groundsels with leaves covered in wool for insulation. Keep it distinct from the fiber drawn from conifer leaves, which is extracted from the plant rather than growing on its surface.
- 4Yarn for knitting or weaving, including yarn made from synthetic fibers rather than animal hair.
She keeps a basket of wool by her armchair for evening knitting.
Most of the wool sold in craft shops now is at least partly synthetic.
Similaryarn
Note
A British and New Zealand habit: here the word follows knitting yarn wherever it goes, even into acrylic and other synthetics. A ball of wool from a craft shop there may contain no animal fiber at all. Elsewhere yarn is the neutral word, and wool points to the animal fiber of the cloth and yarn sense. A knitting pattern's "wool" may therefore not mean anything from a sheep.
- 5A fine fiber produced from the needles of certain conifers, such as pines and firs.
Nineteenth-century mills spun wool from pine needles into a coarse but warm fabric.
The cushions were stuffed with wool drawn from fir leaves.
- 6A person from one of the towns surrounding Liverpool, such as St Helens or Warrington, used as an insult by people from the city itself.
He hated being branded a wool the moment he opened his mouth outside the city.
To the city crowd, anyone from Warrington was just a wool.
Note
Merseyside slang with an edge. It is the same insult as woolly back, thrown by city Liverpudlians at people from St Helens, Warrington and the other towns around them. Yonner belongs to the same family of jibes. Because it is derogatory, it is a word to recognize rather than use, and it only makes sense within Liverpool's own geography.
- 7A cannabis cigarette or cigar that has been laced with crack cocaine.
Dealers in the area were known to sell wool to late-night customers.
The two of them shared a wool behind the abandoned lot.
Note
Drug slang from the street and from hip-hop, and unlike the fiber senses it counts. Gang Starr's "Sabotage" on The Ownerz (2003) uses the plural for someone who smokes a great many of them, constantly. Chris Berdik's Mind Over Mind (2012) records a dealer nicknamed Wool Lou because he sold them. Wooler and woolie are alternative names. The word is tied to crack use and does not belong in general conversation.
Less common meaning
- 8Short, thick hair, especially hair that is crisp or tightly curled.
wool of bat and tongue of dog
c. 1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”Note
A Shakespearean survival rather than a living use. The witches' brew in Macbeth calls for "wool of bat and tongue of dog," where the word means a bat's short, dense fur. Outside echoes of that line it reads as deliberately old or literary. For crisp or curly hair today, hair or fur is the safe choice, and a writer who uses wool this way will be heard as quoting.
Practice
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Origin
This word comes from Middle English "wolle," from Old English "wull," and traces back through Proto-Germanic *wullō to a Proto-Indo-European root. It is related to Dutch "wol," German "Wolle," Latin "lāna," and many other words for wool across European languages.