sarsenet

English

Alternative forms

• sarsnet
• sarcenet
• sarconet

Etymology

From Anglo-Norman sarzinett, from Old French sarrasinet, diminutive of sarrazin (“Saracen”).

Noun

sarsenet (countable and uncountable, plural sarsenets)

1. A very fine and soft silk ribbon woven in a plain weave with a fine warp and higher density weft, now chiefly used for linings.
   • c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Famous Historie of Troylus and Cresseid. […] (First Quarto), London: […] G[eorge] Eld for R[ichard] Bonian and H[enry] Walley, […], published 1609, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], signature K, recto:

     No, vvhy art thou then exaſperate, thou idle, / immaterial ſkeine of ſleiue ſilke; thou greene ſacenet flap for a ſore eye, thou toſſell of a prodigalls purſe— […]

   • 1871–1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XV, in Middlemarch […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book II:

     [H]ave not these structures some common basis from which they have all started, as your sarsnet, gauze, net, satin and velvet from the raw cocoon?

Anagrams

• Saeterns, assenter, earnests, estranes, steranes