Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is Episode 110, died in the wool.

In this episode, we're going to look at an aspect of English society that was undergoing

some major changes in the late 1200s, and that's the wool and cloth industry.

It may not seem like a sexy topic, but this was a period when medieval fashions were changing.

Clothing was becoming shorter and tighter and more closely tailored, and older articles

of clothing were starting to be replaced with newer articles of clothing.

In this episode, we'll explore the important role of the English wool industry, and we'll

see how new innovations were changing both the production of cloth and the clothing that

was made from that cloth.

We'll also examine how the medieval wool and cloth industry shaped the English language.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com,

and you can sign up to support the podcast at patreon.com slash history of English.

And as always, you can reach me by email at kevinathistoryofenglishpodcast.com.

Now let's turn to this episode, and let's begin by considering our modern words for basic

articles of clothing.

As we've seen before, many of our most basic words can be traced back to Old English.

The first words that we learn as small children tend to be very old words, words that go

back to the Anglo-Saxons.

Once the case with numbers and family relations like mother and father and brother and sister,

it's true for basic parts of the body, like head, arm, foot, finger, and so on.

These words are part of our core vocabulary.

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