Netting
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Something that acts as, or looks like, a net. countable, uncountable
"Who ever ſaw a noble ſight, / That never view'd a brave Sea Fight: / Hang up your bloody Colours in the Aire, / Up with your Fights, and your Nettings prepare, / Your Merry Mates chear, with a luſty bold ſpright, / Now each Man his brindice, and then to the Fight, […]"
- 2 Urine. UK, dialectal, obsolete, uncountable
"Any undecente or noysome thinge as[…]Nettinge or Fylthe."
- 3 creating nets wordnet
- 4 a net of transparent fabric with a loose open weave wordnet
- 1 present participle and gerund of net form-of, gerund, participle, present
Example
More examples"Tom slept under mosquito netting."
Etymology
From net + -ing.
From Middle English netting (“urine”). Further etymology unclear. Perhaps borrowed from Middle Low German nattinge (“wetness”), or derived from Middle Low German nette (“wetness, urine”), netten (“to wet, urinate”), from Old Saxon *nettian, from Proto-West Germanic *nattjan. Alternatively, perhaps from an unrecorded Old English *nettan (“to wet”), from Proto-West Germanic *nattjan (“to wet”), related to Middle Low German netten (“to wet, urinate”), Dutch netten (“to wet”), German nässen (“to wet”), all related to the above.
Related phrases
More for "netting"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.