felt

/ˈfɛlt/

felt noun: a cloth or stuff made of matted fibres of wool, or wool and fur, fulled or wrought into a compact substance by rolling and pressure, with lees or size, without spinning or weaving. Also the simple past and past participle of feel.

Image: Bastet78, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

felt (countable and uncountable, plural felts)

A cloth or stuff made of matted fibres of wool, or wool and fur, fulled or wrought into a compact substance by rolling and pressure, with lees or size, without spinning or weaving.
- It were a delicate stratagem to shoe
  A troop of horse with felt.c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
A hat made of felt.
A felt-tip pen.
- You'll notice that all the illustrations are done in different media: some with pencil crayons, some with felts, some with paint, some with chalk pastels.1989, Anne D. Forester, Margaret Reinhard, The Learners' Way, page 116
(obsolete) A skin or hide; a fell; a pelt.
- To know whether sheep are sound or not, see that the felt be loose.1707, John Mortimer, The whole art of husbandry

Verb

felt (third-person singular simple present felts, present participle felting, simple past and past participle felted)

(transitive) To make into felt or a feltlike substance; to cause to adhere and mat together.
- the same Wool , for instance , one Men felts it into a Hat, another weaves it into Cloth , another weaves it into Kersey or Sergea. 1677 (date written), Matthew Hale, The Primitive Origination of Mankind, Considered and Examined According to the Light of Nature, London: […] William Godbid, for William Shrowsbery, […]...
(transitive) To cover with, or as if with, felt.
- to felt the cylinder of a steam engine
(transitive) To cause (a player) to lose all their chips.
(Internet, broadly, transitive) To thoroughly defeat or humiliate (someone).

Adjective

felt (comparative more felt, superlative most felt)

(transitive) That has been experienced or perceived.
- Conversions to Islam can therefore be a deeply felt aesthetic experience that rarely occurs in Christian accounts of conversion, which are generally the source rather than the result of a Christian experience of beauty.2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 257

Noun (2) capitalized: FELT

FELT (plural FELTs)

(abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of fast-evolving luminous transient, a type of supernova.

Proper noun capitalized: Felt

Felt (plural Felts)

A surname.
- Anaïs Felt, a 31-year-old content creator based in the San Francisco Bay area, has “never felt better” after taking a microretirement this year. […] In the caption, Felt noted that the break is “totally worth it” if you have the money. She’s “childfree” and had saved up “a sizable chunk” of funds...2024 December 31, Brooke Kato, “What is ‘microretirement’? Gen Z and millennials spawn new career trend to help with woes”, in New York Post

Also used as

felt is also the simple past and past participle of feel.

felt meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam and Punjabi

felt in Hindi

cloth made of matted fibres of wool: नमदा namdā

felt in Marathi

जाणवले, जाणवली

felt in Malayalam

അനുഭവപ്പെട്ടു

felt in Punjabi

ਮਹਿਸੂਸ ਕੀਤਾ, ਮਹਿਸੂਸ ਕੀਤਾ ਗਿਆ, ਮਹਿਸੂਸ ਕੀਤੀ

More languagesFewer languages

felt in Tagalog: pyeltro, piyeltro
felt in Persian: نمد namad
felt in Thai: สักหลาด sàk-gà-làat

Examples of felt in a sentence

In replacing the faucet washers, he felt he was making his contribution to the environment.
It was felt that I'd be the right man for the job.
She suddenly felt strange, and only then realized she'd been drugged.

All 40 example sentences with felt

Forms of felt

Noun
plural	felts
plural	FELTs
alternative form (archaic)	felte
Verb
third-person singular present	felts
present participle	felting
past participle	felted
past	felted
Adjective
comparative	more felt
superlative	most felt
Proper noun
plural	Felts

Plural of felt: felts

Origin of felt

From Middle English felt, from Old English felt, from Proto-West Germanic *felt (compare Dutch vilt, German Filz, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish filt, French feutre), from Proto-Indo-European *pilto, *pilso 'felt' (compare Latin pilleus (“felt”, adjective), Old Church Slavonic плъсть (plŭstĭ), Albanian plis, Ancient Greek πῖλος (pîlos)), from *pel- 'to beat'. More at anvil.

From Old English fēled, corresponding to feel + -ed.

Words formed from felt

Words that rhyme with felt

12 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about felt

What does felt mean?: Felt means a cloth or stuff made of matted fibres of wool, or wool and fur, fulled or wrought into a compact substance by rolling and pressure, with lees or size, without spinning or weaving.
What is felt in Hindi?: Felt in Hindi is नमदा (namdā). See Felt meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is felt?: Felt can be a noun, a verb, an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce felt?: Felt is pronounced /ˈfɛlt/.
What is the plural of felt?: The plural of felt is felts.

Words near felt in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: felt (page history and authors); FELT (page history and authors); Felt (page history and authors); felt (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); felt (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); felt (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-felt.ogg.

Cite this entry: “felt.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/felt. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.