Word.ws English Dictionary

sackcloth

sackcloth noun: a coarse hessian style of cloth used to make sacks.

sackcloth: a coarse hessian style of cloth used to make sacks
Image: Clara.Hoke, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

sackcloth (countable and uncountable, plural sackcloths)

  1. A coarse hessian style of cloth used to make sacks.
  2. (also, figuratively, usually) Garments worn as an act of penance.
    • After he realised the gravity of his crime he spent some time wearing sackcloth and ashes.
    • Next you saw her alone, a kneeling penitent at the foot of the crucifix; her long fair hair is unbound, and the sackcloth robe is girded by a cord round her slender shape: her hands are clasped, and tears are flowing fast from the quenched radiance of those shadowy eyes;...1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 144
    Synonyms:
    hairshirt, cilice

sackcloth meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Urdu and Malayalam

sackcloth in Tamil

முரட்டுச் சணல் துணி

sackcloth in Marathi

sackcloth
गोणी goṇī

sackcloth in Urdu

ٹاٹ

sackcloth in Malayalam

Hessian, sacking, hopsack
ചാക്കുതുണി, ചണത്തുണി, ചണനാരുകൊണ്ടുണ്ടാക്കുന്ന പരുക്കൻതുണി, ചണവസ്ത്രം, ഇരട്ട്, രട്ട്
More languagesFewer languages
sackcloth in Punjabi
ਤੱਪੜ tappaṛ

Synonyms of sackcloth

Forms of sackcloth

pluralsackcloths

Origin of sackcloth

From Middle English sakcloth, sekcloth, sekclath, sekklath. By surface analysis, sack + cloth.

Words formed from sackcloth

Phrases with sackcloth

Questions about sackcloth

What does sackcloth mean?
Sackcloth means a coarse hessian style of cloth used to make sacks.
What is sackcloth in Tamil?
Sackcloth in Tamil is முரட்டுச் சணல் துணி. See Sackcloth meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is sackcloth?
Sackcloth is a noun.
What is the plural of sackcloth?
The plural of sackcloth is sackcloths.

Words near sackcloth in the dictionary

  1. sackbuttist
  2. sackbuttists
  3. sackbutts
  4. sackcloath
  5. sackcloaths
  6. sackcloth
  7. sackclothed
  8. sackcloths
  9. sacked
  10. sacked off
  11. sacked out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sackcloth (page history and authors); sackcloth (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); गोणी (Marathi) (page history and authors); sackcloth (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sackcloth (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset 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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sackcloth.wav.

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