Silken
adj, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 To render silken or silklike. transitive
"silkening body lotion"
- 1 Made of silk. not-comparable
"a silken veil"
- 2 Synonym of silky, like silk, silklike, particularly; Having a smooth, soft, or light texture. not-comparable
"Come then youth, Beauty, and Blood, all ye soft powers, / Whose silken flatteryes swell a few fond houres."
- 3 Synonym of silky, like silk, silklike, particularly; Having a smooth, soft, or flowing utterance; attractive or (typically derogatory) convincing through pleasing expression. figuratively, not-comparable
"Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, / Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation, / Figures pedantical; these summer-flies / Have blown me full of maggot ostentation:"
- 4 Dressed in silk. not-comparable
"[S]hall a beardless boy, / A cocker’d silken wanton, brave our fields […]?"
- 1 having a smooth, gleaming surface reflecting light; being of a smooth, soft and lustrous quality, resembling silk wordnet
Example
More examples"Would God, I were the tender apple blossom, That floats and falls from off the twisted bough, To lie and faint within your silken bosom, Within your silken bosom as that does now."
Etymology
From Middle English silken, selken, seolkene, from Old English seolcen, from seolc (“silk”) + -en, from an unattested early Proto-West Germanic borrowing from Latin sēricum, from Ancient Greek σηρικός (sērikós, “silken”), from σήρ (sḗr, “silkworm”) + -ικός (-ikós, “-ic”). Equivalent to silk + -en (“made of”). Cognate with Scots selkin, silkin (“silken”), Icelandic silki (“silken”).
Related phrases
More for "silken"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.