lawns

Noun (1)

lawn (countable and uncountable, plural lawns)

1. Ground (generally in front of or around a house) covered with grass kept closely mown.
   • Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path[…]. It twisted and turned,[…]and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn. And, back of the lawn, was a big, old-fashioned house, with piazzas stretching in front of it, and all blazing with lights. 'Twas the house I'd seen the roof of from the beach.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
2. (England, historical, regional) An open space between woods.
3. An overgrown agar culture, such that no separation between single colonies exists.

Noun (2)

lawn (countable and uncountable, plural lawns)

1. (uncountable) A type of thin linen or cotton fabric tightly woven of fine threads. (Traditionally expensive and luxurious in centuries past.)
   • Two hundred Sempſtreſſes were employed to make me Shirts, and Linen for Bed and Table, all of the ſtrongeft and coarſeſt kind they could get; which, however, they were forced to quilt together in ſeveral Folds, for the thickeſt was ſome degrees finer than Lawn.1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “Of the Inhabitants of Lilliput; […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […]...
2. (in plural) Pieces of this fabric, especially as used for the sleeves of a bishop.
3. (countable, obsolete) A piece of clothing made from lawn.
   • […] she was as the wild yoncopin to the calla lily. Marjie knew how to dress. To-day, shaded by the buggy-top, in her dainty light blue lawn, with the soft pink of her cheeks and her clear white brow and throat, she was a most delicious thing […]1910, Margaret Hill McCarter, The Price of the Prairie

See all 11 meanings of lawn