flannel

plural flannels · alternative dialectal flannen · alternative Scotland flanan · alternative Scotland flanning · alternative Scotland flanen

1. uncountableA soft cloth material originally woven from wool, today often combined with cotton or synthetic fibers.

   With the weather turning colder, it was time to dig out our flannel sheets and nightclothes.

   2 more examples

   First singer and guitarist Marcus Mumford, wearing a black suit, then bassist Ted Dwane, in leather bomber and T-shirt. Next bearded banjo player Winston Marshall, his blue flannel shirt hanging loose, and pianist Ben Lovett, wrapped in a woollen coat.

   2012 November 15, Tom Lamont, “How Mumford & Sons became the biggest band in the world”, in The Daily Telegraph

   There’s a communal memory of [Kurt] Cobain’s wearing flannel in this video, and that this image was the dawn of grunge fashion.

   2022, Chuck Klosterman, The Nineties, New York: Penguin Press, →ISBN

2. New ZealandUKcountableA washcloth.

   "The Witch of Endor was a fool to her, sir: bless you, she would make no more of raising every gentleman in the Bible out of these here beastly tombs than I should of growing cress on an old flannel."

   1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

3. UScountableA flannel shirt.
4. slanguncountableSoothing, plausible untruth or half-truth; claptrap.

   Don't talk flannel!

5. UKcountableobsoleteuncountableSynonym of flip (“hot mixture of beer, spirit, etc.”).

   Synonyms: flip

alternative dialectal flannen · alternative Scotland flanan · alternative Scotland flanning · alternative Scotland flanen

1. not comparableMade of flannel.

present singular third person flannels · US participle present flanneling · UK participle present flannelling · US participle past flanneled · US past flanneled · UK participle past flannelled · UK past flannelled · alternative dialectal flannen · alternative Scotland flanan · alternative Scotland flanning · alternative Scotland flanen

1. transitiveTo rub with a flannel.
2. transitiveTo wrap in flannel.
3. transitiveTo flatter; to suck up to.

   Synonyms: fawn, toady, apple-polish, bootlick, bow and scrape, brown-nose, butter up, dickride

4. slangtransitiveTo waffle or prevaricate.

   I got a little cross and asked him to stop flannelling and to tell me what was holding me back. Were my annual assessments below par? Was there something I had done – or not done?

   2016, J. F. Langer, From the Spitfire Cockpit to the Cabinet Office