taffeta
Other forms: taffetas
Taffeta is a smooth, shiny fabric that's used to make formal dresses and fancy curtains. You were thrilled to be chosen as the maid of honor in your best friend's wedding until you learned you'd have to wear a poofy, lime-green taffeta bridesmaid dress.
Some taffeta is very stiff—wide-skirted ball gowns, formal prom dresses, and wedding dresses are commonly made from this type of taffeta. Sometimes it's softer, like the taffeta that is used in linings of dresses or draperies. The most expensive taffeta is made from silk. The word taffeta comes from the Persian taftah, "silk or linen cloth," and its root, taftan, "to twist or spin."
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a crisp, smooth, lustrous fabric
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Vocabulary lists containing taffeta
Are you ready to weave through this textiletastic list of fabrics? Explore the coziness of cotton and the sleekness of silk. Whether you're into comfort or style, we've got you covered.
In Fight Club, possibly the manliest movie of the nineties, Brad Pitt's character Tyler Durden asks, "Now why do guys like you and me know what a duvet is? Is this essential to our survival, in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word?" Contrary to Tyler Durden's suggestion about feminization and consumerism, the results of a new online vocabulary test from Ghent University suggest that men aren't as familiar with stereotypically "female" words like "taffeta" as Durden suggested. (Though it should be noted that it is only on "taffeta" that the percentage of males who know the word falls below 50%. Most of these words were familiar to more than half the men) The words below are those with the biggest percentage splits by gender where women knew the word more than men in a simple recognition task.
The oldest of her surviving mouse siblings, Helena recounts the adventures of her family when they hid in the trunk of a human to sail from New York to England.