Word.ws English Dictionary

gingham

/ˈɡɪŋ.əm/

gingham noun: a cotton fabric made from dyed and white yarn woven in checks.

gingham: a cotton fabric made from dyed and white yarn woven in checks
Image: SMcCandlish, using the old Windows software Textile32, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

gingham (countable and uncountable, plural ginghams)

  1. (uncountable) A cotton fabric made from dyed and white yarn woven in checks.
    • And she found that she was not wearing a despised muslin frock! Her dress was gingham!—an adorable plaid with long sleeves, and a patch-pocket low down on the right side!1913, Eleanor Gates, The Poor Little Rich Girl
    • Aunt Elizabeth had produced a terrible gingham apron and an equally terrible gingham sunbonnet from somewhere in the New Moon garret, and made Emily put them on. The apron was a long sack-like garment, high in the neck, with sleeves.1923, L[ucy] M[aud] Montgomery, “Chapter 8”, in Emily of New Moon, Toronto, Ont.: McClelland and Stewart, →OCLC
  2. (countable) A dress made from that material.
    • "We have put on the pale blue silks that we wore at Isabella's wedding; that, however, was Georgiana's thought," continued Helen; "she said it would be impossible to go to church in our pink ginghams."1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIV, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 187
  3. (UK, archaic, slang) An umbrella.
    • […] their ginghams stuck under their arms at right angles to their back-bones […]1878, Gilbert Abbott À Beckett, George Cruikshank's Table-book, page 268

gingham meaning in Tamil and Malay

gingham in Tamil

கிங்காம்

gingham in Malay

a cotton fabric made from dyed and white yarn woven in checks
genggang, gingam

Examples of gingham in a sentence

  • Always, the relentless bass of hip-hop blasting in rooms of nautical-themed furnishings, faded driftwood, gingham upholstery, linen and chambray.2022, Ling Ma, “G”, in Bliss Montage, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN:
  • Tradwifedom, the meekly old-fashioned vision of domesticity served up on Instagram by a bunch of submissive influencers in aprons, is a gingham-lined trap visible from space […].2025 August 28, Gaby Hinsliff, “Taylor Swift: engaged, mummy-tracked and doomed to tradwifedom? You really haven’t been listening”, in The...

Forms of gingham

pluralginghams

Origin of gingham

From Malay genggang (“ajar; apart”), or a corruption of French Guingamp, the name of a town in Brittany, France, where this cloth may have been made.

Words formed from gingham

Questions about gingham

What does gingham mean?
Gingham means a cotton fabric made from dyed and white yarn woven in checks.
What is gingham in Tamil?
Gingham in Tamil is கிங்காம். See Gingham meaning in Tamil.
How do you use gingham in a sentence?
Always, the relentless bass of hip-hop blasting in rooms of nautical-themed furnishings, faded driftwood, gingham upholstery, linen and chambray.
What part of speech is gingham?
Gingham is a noun.
How do you pronounce gingham?
Gingham is pronounced /ˈɡɪŋ.əm/.
What is the plural of gingham?
The plural of gingham is ginghams.

Words near gingham in the dictionary

  1. gingerwork
  2. gingery
  3. ginges
  4. gingette
  5. gingettes
  6. gingham
  7. ginghamed
  8. ginghammed
  9. ginghams
  10. ginghamy
  11. Ginghi

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gingham (page history and authors); gingham (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). 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:

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

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