laundry stiffener
- noun
- /ˈlɔːndri ˈstɪfənər/
:
almidón para lavandería
- She added a laundry stiffener to the final rinse to keep her collars crisp.
Examples
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Using a laundry stiffener can help your curtains hold their shape.
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The directions on the laundry stiffener recommend diluting before use.
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I added some laundry stiffener to make my shirts crisper.
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Do you use laundry stiffeners for your clothes?
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She added a laundry stiffener to the final rinse to keep her collars crisp.
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The directions on the laundry stiffener recommend diluting before use.
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Using a laundry stiffener can help your curtains hold their shape.
Synonyms
1
6.5
A material that makes something stronger and stops it bending
Something you put on cloth to make it stiff
How Stiff
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is a straightforward noun–noun construction where 'stiffener' (a material that prevents bending) is specified as applying to 'laundry' (clothes/linens); the overall meaning of a substance used to make clothes stiffer is directly inferable from the parts. This compositional pattern is common cross-linguistically and follows normal English word-formation, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents should understand it.
Etymology
The noun laundry stiffener comes from the old habit of adding starch to wet clothes so collars and cuffs dried hard. The parts laundry and stiffener are literal: laundry is the washed clothes and a stiffener is something that makes them stiff, so the phrase means 'a substance added to laundry to make fabrics stiffer'.