It's Merriam-Webster's word of the day for February 1st.

Today's word is Damask, spelled D-A-M-A-S-K.

Damisk is a noun.

It refers to a usually shiny, thick fabric as of linen, cotton, silk, or rayon made with patterns.

The word can also be used as a synonym of Damascus steel,

or for a grayish-red color.

Here's the word used in a sentence from veranda.com.

though Damask first emerged in the third century b c.e.

when Chinese weavers used one warp and one weft thread to create opulent reversible

topographies of silk that draped the shoulders of emperors.

It gained its moniker when Syrian merchants introduced the fabric to European

weavers.

Upon visiting the city of Damascus in 1867, Mark Twain wrote that, to Damascus, years are only moments, decades are only

flitting trifles of time. She measures time not by days and months and years, but by the empires she has seen rise and prosper and crumble to ruin.

She is a type of immortality.

Indeed, the city's Arabic name comes from Damascus, a word so ancient that it

suggests the origins of the city predate recorded history. The medieval Latin name for the fabric famously associated with the

Pearl of the East, Damascus, first entered Middle English as Damask in the 1300s and was later shortened to Damask. That term has also been used in the

intervening centuries for a type of steel, though neither the fabric nor the steel likely originated there.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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