blanket

What it means

1. A heavy, loosely woven fabric, usually large and woollen, used for warmth while sleeping or resting.

   The baby was cold, so his mother put a blanket over him.

   1 more example

   The little boys in the front bedroom had thrown off their blankets and lay under the sheets.

   1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC

2. A covering layer of anything.

   The city woke under a thick blanket of fog.

   2 more examples

   In this case, the excavations were carried down to a depth of 3 ft. 9 in. below rail level, and pre-cast concrete slabs were laid between a 12 in. blanket of quarry waste and the ballast.

   1948 March and April, “Notes and News: Slab Blanketing at Clapham Junction”, in Railway Magazine, page 131

   There was no difficulty in sighting the semaphores from this timely warning to each one; but it would have been another matter if the driver had to peer continuously into that white blanket [fog] looking for them without any pre-warning.

   1959 April 28, O. S. Nock, “British Locomotive Practice and Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 266

3. A thick rubber mat used in the offset printing process to transfer ink from the plate to the paper being printed.

   A press operator must carefully wash the blanket whenever changing a plate.

In a sentence

The baby was cold, so his mother put a blanket over him.

Where it comes from

1. Old Englishhwītel“blanket; cloak, mantle”
2. Middle Englishblanket
3. Englishblanket

Inherited from Middle English blanket, blonket, blaunket, from Old Northern French blanket, blancet (“white horse", also "white woollen cloth or flannel; a type of jacket”, literally “that which is white”) (whence Modern French blanchet), diminutive of blanc (“white”), of Germanic origin (compare Old English blanca (“white horse”); see more at blank). Furthermore, the sense "white woollen cloth" is likely a calque of Old English hwītel (“blanket; cloak, mantle”), from Old English hwīt (“white”) + -el (diminutive suffix). Compare also Old Norse hvítill (“a white bed-cover, sheet”), Norwegian kvitel (“blanket”). Compare also blunket, plunket. Displaced native Middle English whytel, from Old English hwītel (whence Modern English whittle (“blanket, cloak, shawl”)).