Word.ws English Dictionary

worsted

/ˈwʊs.tɪd//ˈwʊs.tɪd/

worsted noun: yarn made from long strands of wool. Also the simple past and past participle of worst.

worsted: yarn made from long strands of wool
Image: Lauren "Lolly" Weinhold from Maryland, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

worsted (countable and uncountable, plural worsteds)

  1. Yarn made from long strands of wool.
    • An old ſet-ſtitch’d chair, valanced and fringed around with party-colour’d worſted bobs, ſtood at the bed’s head, oppoſite to the ſide where my father’s head reclined.1761, [Laurence Sterne], chapter XXIX, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, volume III, London: […] R[obert] and J[ames] Dodsley […], →OCLC, page 142
    • [T]he kitten had been having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all come undone again; […]1871 December 27 (indicated as 1872), Lewis Carroll [pseudonym; Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], “Looking-Glass House”, in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, London: Macmillan and Co....
  2. The fine, smooth fabric made from such wool yarn.
    • [T]he undertaker’s wife opened a side door, and pushed Oliver down a steep flight of stairs into a stone cell, damp and dark, forming the ante-room to the coal-cellar, and denominated “the kitchen,” wherein sat a slatternly girl in shoes down at heel, and blue worsted stockings very much out of...1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], Oliver Twist; […], volume (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 64
    • He had tied a bit of white worsted round his neck—Why? Where did he get it? Was it a badge—an ornament—a charm—a propitiatory act? Was there any idea at all connected with it?1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 207...

Adjective

UK/ˈwəː.stɪd/US/ˈwɝ.stɪd/

worsted (comparative more worsted, superlative most worsted)

  1. Defeated, overcome.
    • The worsted army fled in disarray.

Also used as

worsted is also the simple past and past participle of worst.

worsted meaning in Persian

worsted in Persian

fine smooth wool fabric
فاستونی fâstoni

Examples of worsted in a sentence

  • She did not mean to go beyond this salutary general doctrine, and threw her indignation into a needless unwinding of her worsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand air.1871–1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter LVII, in Middlemarch […], volume III, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and...
  • Finally he took a ball of worsted and tied strings of it across the back passage and across the opposite door.1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “In which Three Investigators Come across a Dark Soul”, in The Land of Mist, New York, N.Y....
  • Worstead became the centre for the manufacture of this new material, which came to be known as worsted – after the village.1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 414, about Worstead:
  • The cognitive dissonance is plain to see on the faces of recruiters who pretend clothing is no big deal, but are clearly disappointed if you show up to a job interview in a dark worsted business suit.2024 July 20, Derek Guy, “What is ‘mogul style’? Why billionaire bland has had its day”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London...

All 10 example sentences with worsted

Synonyms of worsted

10 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of worsted

Forms of worsted

Noun
pluralworsteds
Adjective
comparativemore worsted
superlativemost worsted

Origin of worsted

Inherited from Middle English worstede, worsted, from Worstede (now Worstead; Old English *Wurϸestede), a town in Norfolk, England.

Participle adjective of the verb worst.

Words formed from worsted

Questions about worsted

What does worsted mean?
Worsted means yarn made from long strands of wool.
What is worsted in Persian?
Worsted in Persian is فاستونی (fâstoni). See Worsted meaning in Persian.
How do you use worsted in a sentence?
She did not mean to go beyond this salutary general doctrine, and threw her indignation into a needless unwinding of her worsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand air.
What part of speech is worsted?
Worsted can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce worsted?
Worsted is pronounced /ˈwʊs.tɪd/ (UK).
What is the plural of worsted?
The plural of worsted is worsteds.

Words near worsted in the dictionary

  1. worst-case scenarios
  2. worst-kept secret
  3. worst-kept secrets
  4. worst-tempered
  5. Worstead
  6. worsted
  7. worsteds
  8. Worstell
  9. Worstells
  10. Worster
  11. Worster-Drought

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: worsted (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-ncalif-worsted.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-worsted.wav.

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