raw wool
- noun
- /rɔː wʊl/
:
lana cruda
- She demonstrated how to clean and prepare raw wool before dyeing it.
Examples
-
They were wrapped in sheepskins and blanket-like cloaks of raw wool, looking like hairy bundles with feet.
Fiction book (2000) -
She'd eat a bale of raw wool before she'd make tea and fetch cookies.
Fiction book (1994) -
The farmer sorted the fleece to collect the finest raw wool for spinning.
-
After shearing the sheep, they collected the raw wool for processing into yarn.
Synonyms
140
1.0
Soft thick hair from sheep or similar animals used to make warm cloth
1
4.2
New material from sheep that has not been used or made into cloth before
Antonyms
How Processed
- Specialized
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'wool in its natural, unprocessed state' is directly and predictably derived from combining 'raw' (unprocessed, natural) with 'wool' (sheep fibre). This adjective + noun composition follows standard semantic rules and is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily understand it.
Etymology
The noun raw wool comes from the simple picture of wool just cut from a sheep: raw means not cleaned and wool is the animal hair. Because it is still dirty and not yet processed, the term means 'wool in its natural state' before spinning or refining.