Definition
nounA heavy, loosely woven fabric, usually large and woollen, used for warmth while sleeping or resting.
nounA covering layer of anything.
Sentence Examples
I'm very sensitive to cold. May I have another blanket?
It was so cold I clung to the blanket all day.
It’s cold tonight—can I have another blanket?
Word Origin & History
Inherited from Middle English blanket, blonket, blaunket, from Old Northern French blanket, blancet (“white horse", also "white woollen cloth or flannel; a type of jacket”, literally “that which is white”) (whence Modern French blanchet), diminutive of blanc (“white”), of Germanic origin (compare Old English blanca (“white horse”); see more at blank). Furthermore, the sense "white woollen cloth" is likely a calque of Old English hwītel (“blanket; cloak, mantle”), from Old English hwīt (“white”) + -el (diminutive suffix). Compare also Old Norse hvítill (“a white bed-cover, sheet”), Norwegian kvitel (“blanket”).
Compare also blunket, plunket. Displaced native Middle English whytel, from Old English hwītel (whence Modern English whittle (“blanket, cloak, shawl”)).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"The little boys in the front bedroom had thrown off their blankets and lay under the sheets."
— 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC:
"In this case, the excavations were carried down to a depth of 3 ft. 9 in. below rail level, and pre-cast concrete slabs were laid between a 12 in. blanket of quarry waste and the ballast."
— 1948 March and April, “Notes and News: Slab Blanketing at Clapham Junction”, in Railway Magazine, page 131:
"There was no difficulty in sighting the semaphores from this timely warning to each one; but it would have been another matter if the driver had to peer continuously into that white blanket [fog] looking for them without any pre-warning."
— 1959 April 26, O. S. Nock, “British Locomotive Practice and Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 266:
"Another observer offered a less blanket criticism."
— 1994, Deborah Dash Moore, To the Golden Cities:
"Some others appear to be adopting a more blanket approach"
— 2009, Gayle Letherby, Kate Williams, Philip Birch, Sex as Crime, page 57: