Word.ws English Dictionary

selvedge

selvedge is the alternative spelling of selvage.

Meaning of selvage

Noun

selvage (countable and uncountable, plural selvages)

  1. The edge of a woven fabric, where the weft (side-to-side) threads run around the warp (top to bottom) threads, creating a finished edge.
  2. Any edge of fabric finished so as to prevent raveling.
    • Her stately limbs the gather'd folds surround, / And spread their golden selvage on the ground.1803, Erasmus Darwin, The Temple of Nature, The Gutenberg Project, published 2008
  3. The excess area of any printed or perforated sheet, such as the border on a sheet of postage stamps or the wide margins of an engraving.
  4. A distinct border of a mass of igneous rock. It is usually fine-grained or glassy due to rapid cooling.
  5. Clay-like material found along and around a geological fault.
  6. The edge plate of a lock, through which the bolt passes

See all 9 meanings of selvage

Forms of selvedge

Noun
pluralselvedges
Verb
third-person singular presentselvedges
present participleselvedging
past participleselvedged
pastselvedged

Questions about selvedge

What is selvedge the alternative spelling of?
Selvedge is the alternative spelling of selvage.

Words near selvedge in the dictionary

  1. Selvarajs
  2. selvas
  3. selvatic
  4. selve
  5. selved
  6. selvedge
  7. selvedged
  8. selvedges
  9. selvedging
  10. selves
  11. Selvey

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: selvedge (page history and authors); selvage (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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Cite this entry: “selvedge.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/selvedge. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.