Satin
adj, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A cloth woven from silk, nylon or polyester with a glossy surface and a dull back. (The same weaving technique applied to cotton produces cloth termed sateen). countable, uncountable
"Ibn Batuta informs us that a rich silk texture made here was called Zaitûniya; and there can be little doubt that this is the real origin of our word Satin,—Zettani in mediæval Italian, Aceytuni in Spanish."
- 2 a smooth fabric of silk or rayon; has a glossy face and a dull back wordnet
- 3 Gin (the drink). countable, obsolete, slang, uncountable
"'This poor gal was robbed, barely left a stitch, that and the drink... mind, I likes a drop of satin – wot you'd call gin – myself. I'll say nothing against it. She ended thrown out of an upstairs winder.'"
- 1 To make (paper, silver, etc.) smooth and glossy like satin. transitive
- 1 Semigloss. not-comparable
"satin paint"
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"She was wearing a gown of satin."
Etymology
From French satin, which is derived from "Zaitun", the Arabic name for the Chinese city of Quanzhou, itself derived from Arabic زَيْتُون (zaytūn, “Zayton; olive”), from phono-semantic matching from Chinese 刺桐 (MC tshjeH duwng, “coral tree”) in 刺桐城 (MC tshjeH duwng dzyeng, “coral tree town”), an old name for Quanzhou.
Related phrases
More for "satin"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.