Flaxlike

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Having the appearance, color, or fine fibrous texture of the flax plant or its pale, fibers
2. Resembling the flax plant, with slender stems and pale, silky fibers that catch the light
3. Looking or feeling like flax, especially in its pale, fine, and slightly lustrous fibrous quality

Etymology: Flaxlike is about as transparent as English compounds get: it joins "flax," the slender blue-flowered plant grown for its fibres (linen) and its seeds (linseed), to the suffix "-like," which means "resembling" or "having the qualities of." Together they describe something that looks or feels like flax, such as a fine, pale, slightly silky fibre or a thin, straight, fair-coloured strand of hair. The base word "flax" is ancient and native to Germanic, Old English "fleax," with cognates across the North Sea languages. "-like" traces back to Old English "-lic," the same element that gave English "lovely" and "godly," and it became one of the most productive suffixes in the language, so forming a new adjective like this one requires no special invention.

Synonyms: linenlike