Word of the Day

: February 1, 2024

damask

noun DAM-usk

What It Means

Damask refers to a usually shiny, thick fabric (as of linen, cotton, silk, or rayon) made with patterns. The word can also be used as a synonym of Damascus steel, or for a grayish red color.

// The old chair was upholstered in a blue silk damask which was now faded and threadbare.

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damask in Context

“Though damask first emerged in the third century BCE, when Chinese weavers used one warp and one weft thread to create opulent, reversible topographies of silk that draped the shoulders of emperors, it gained its moniker when Syrian merchants introduced the fabric to European weavers.” — Mary Alice Russell and Tracey Minkin, Veranda.com, 19 Oct. 2023

Did You Know?

Upon visiting the city of Damascus in 1867, Mark Twain wrote that “To Damascus, years are only moments, decades are only flitting trifles of time. She measures time not by days and months and years, but by the empires she has seen rise and prosper and crumble to ruin. She is a type of immortality.” Indeed, the city’s Arabic name comes from Dimašqa, a word so ancient that it suggests the origins of the city predate recorded history. The Medieval Latin name for the fabric famously associated with the “pearl of the East,” damascus, first entered Middle English as damaske in the 1300s and was later shortened to damask. That term has also been used in the intervening centuries for a type of steel, though neither the fabric nor the steel likely originated there.