Skip to main content
ironing

ironing

3 1.0
Clothes and other cloth items waiting to be smoothed or already smoothed with a hot flat tool
  • noun
  • /ˈaɪərnɪŋ/
translation icon : ropa para planchar
  • So fresh and clean, as if just off the ironing board.
  • ironing board

Examples

  • There's an ironing board next to the washing machine in our porch, but no one ever irons on it.

    Fiction book (2000)
  • Skirts clipped on hangers draped over ironing boards.

    Fiction book (2000)
  • Take that ironing and have it back in an hour.

  • I have some ironing to do.

  • There was also the ironing.

    Fiction book (2002)
  • It's my ironing day.

  • If I don't get this ironing to Mrs. Duke by four, I wont get a tip.

  • Well, I am kind of news-less and have a pile of ironing to do, and the oil stove smoked in the entrance yesterday, so I should wash off the walls again, which I did just before Christmas.

    Academic text (2016)
  • Her gaze skittered across shelves and pictures, coming to rest briefly on the open ironing board and the loops of brilliant colors, rainbow skeins of embroidery thread hanging on cup hooks beneath one of the shelves.

    Fiction book (1993)
  • I have a pile of ironing to tackle this weekend.

Antonyms

34 1.5

Having small lines on skin or cloth

3.4

Clothes with creases or wrinkles that are not smoothed

Compounds

A long narrow padded board with folding legs used to press clothes

A machine with a large heated plate that presses clothes flat

How Smooth

ironed
1.0
ironing
3 1.0
wrinkled
34 1.5

Surface Forms

ironing singular
ironings plural

Morphology

ironing = iron (transparent) = iron + ing

Derived by nominalization of the verb 'iron' to refer to garments/items that are to be or have been ironed; the relation to 'iron' is clear.

Etymology

Ironing can also mean the clothes or sheets that are 'to be ironed' or have been ironed. This sense comes from the same tool iron plus -ing, so the word can name both the action and the items for the iron.