blunket

Meaning

Noun

• A cloth, or kind of cloth (blanket cloth), generally but not always of this color.

Origin

• From Middle English plunket. It is unclear if the fabric (which often retained the spelling plunket) gave its name to the color or the other way around. The word is similar to blanket, inviting speculation that it derives (like that word) from Old French blanchet ("whitish"), but the most common form even as late as Early Modern English was blunket, and some early works seem to identify it as dark red or violet, which makes that theory phonologically and semantically problematic.