tartan

Meanings

Noun

• A kind of woven woollen cloth with a distinctive pattern of coloured stripes intersecting at right angles, associated with Scottish Highlanders, different clans and some Scottish families and institutions having their own distinctive patterns.
• The pattern associated with such material.
• An individual or a group wearing tartan; a Highlander or Scotsman in general.
• A type of one-masted vessel used in the Mediterranean.
• A kind of long covered carriage.

Adjective

• Having a pattern like a tartan.
• Scottish.

Verb

• To clothe in tartan.

Origin

• Blend of Middle English tartaryn ("rich material"), from Middle French tartarin ("Tartar cloth"), and Middle French tiretaine, from Old French tiret ("kind of cloth"), from tire, from Medieval Latin tyrius ("material from Tyre"), from Latin Tyrus ("Tyre").
• Borrowed from French tartane, from Italian tartana, of uncertain origin.