Word.ws English Dictionary

laundry mark

laundry mark noun: an identifying marking, usually in coded form and handwritten in indelible ink on an inconspicuous area of a garment, widely used until the mid-20th century as an organizing aid by merchants who cleaned and pressed clothing.

Noun

laundry mark (plural laundry marks)

  1. (historical) An identifying marking, usually in coded form and handwritten in indelible ink on an inconspicuous area of a garment, widely used until the mid-20th century as an organizing aid by merchants who cleaned and pressed clothing.
    • One of his shirt cuffs . . . bore a laundry mark, and the detectives finally located the laundry in this city.1888 December 5, “Black Bart, the Highwayman”, in Montreal Herald, retrieved 04 Jan 2010, page 6
    • The suit-case gave no clue. It contained one empty leather-covered flask and a pint bottle, also empty, a change of linen and some collars with the laundry mark, S. H.1909, Mary Roberts Rinehart, “Numbers Seven and Nine”, in The Man in Lower Ten, New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC, page 50

Forms of laundry mark

plurallaundry marks
alternative formlaundry-mark

Questions about laundry mark

What does laundry mark mean?
Laundry mark means an identifying marking, usually in coded form and handwritten in indelible ink on an inconspicuous area of a garment, widely used until the mid-20th century as an organizing aid by merchants who cleaned and pressed clothing.
What part of speech is laundry mark?
Laundry mark is a noun.
What is the plural of laundry mark?
The plural of laundry mark is laundry marks.

Words near laundry mark in the dictionary

  1. laundry egg
  2. laundry eggs
  3. laundry line
  4. laundry list
  5. laundry lists
  6. laundry mark
  7. laundry marks
  8. laundry mat
  9. laundry mats
  10. laundry room
  11. laundry sink

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: laundry mark (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.

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