sheet
Definitions
General English
- noun a large piece of thin cloth which is put on a bed, either to lie on or to cover you
- noun a large flat piece of something such as paper, metal, ice or plastic
General Science
- noun a large, thin, flat piece of something
Construction
- A thin piece of material, such as glass, veneer, plywood, or rolled metal. See also panel.
Information & Library Science
- noun a large flat piece of material or paper
Media Studies
- noun a single piece of paper.
- noun a newspaper or periodical, especially one dismissed as trivial
- abbreviationsh.
- abbreviationsht
Slang
- noun an official report. An item of prison jargon recorded in the 1990s in Brixton and Wandsworth prisons.
Origin & History of “sheet”
Sheet ‘cloth’ (OE) and sheet ‘rope attached to a sail’ (OE) are distinct words, although they have a common ancestor. this was the Germanic base *skaut-, *skut- ‘project’, which also produced English scot-free, scuttle ‘sink a ship’, shoot, shot, shout, shut, and skit. This produced two Old English nouns, scēte ‘cloth’ and scēata ‘sail-rope’, which have formally coalesced in modern English as sheet, but retained their distinctive meanings. (Sheet ‘cloth’ was not used specifically for ‘bed sheet’ until the 13th century.).
