What is "lint"

Lint \Lint\ (l[i^]nt), n. [AS. l[=i]net flax, hemp, fr. l[=i]n flax; or, perh. borrowed fr. L. linteum a linen cloth, linen, from linteus linen, a., fr. linum flax, lint. See Linen.]

1. Flax.

2. Linen scraped or otherwise made into a soft, downy or fleecy substance for dressing wounds and sores; also, fine ravelings, down, fluff, or loose short fibers from yarn or fabrics.

   Lint doctor (Calico-printing Mach.), a scraper to remove lint from a printing cylinder.

late 14c., "flax prepared for spinning," also "refuse of flax used as kindling," somehow from the source of Old English lin "flax" (see linen), perhaps from or by influence of Middle French linette "grain of flax," diminutive of lin "flax," from Latin linum "flax, linen;" Klein suggests from Latin linteum "linen cloth," neuter of adjective linteus. Later "flax refuse used as tinder or for dressing wounds" (c.1400). Still used for "flax" in Scotland in Burns' time. Applied in American English to stray cotton fluff.

n. 1 a fine material made by scraping cotton or linen cloth; used for dressing wounds 2 clinging fuzzy fluff that accumulates in one's pockets or navel etc 3 the fibrous coat of thick hairs covering the seeds of the cotton plant

1. n. fine ravellings of cotton or linen fibers

2. cotton or linen fabric with the nap raised on one side; used to dress wounds

In computer programming, lint is a Unix utility that flags some suspicious and non-portable constructs (likely to be bugs) in C language source code; generically, lint or a linter is any tool that flags suspicious usage in software written in any computer language. The term lint-like behavior is sometimes applied to the process of flagging suspicious language usage. Lint-like tools generally perform static analysis of source code.

Lint as a term can also refer more broadly to syntactic discrepancies in general, especially in interpreted languages like JavaScript and Python. For example, modern lint checkers are often used to find code that doesn't correspond to certain style guidelines. They can also be used as simple debuggers for common errors, or hard to find errors such as heisenbugs.

Lint may mean:

• Fibrous coat of thick hairs covering the seeds of the cotton plant
• Lint (material), an accumulation of fluffy fibers that collect on fabric
  • Navel lint, an accumulation of fluffy fibres in one's navel

Lint may also refer to:

Lint is the common name for visible accumulations of textile fibers and other materials, usually found on and around clothing. Certain materials used in the manufacture of clothing, such as cotton, linen, and wool, contain numerous, very short fibers bundled together. During the course of normal wear, these fibers may either detach or be jostled out of the weave of which they are part. This is the reason that heavily used articles like shirts and towels become thin over time, and why these particles collect in the lint screen of a clothes dryer. Because of their low surface area, static cling causes fibers that have detached from an article of clothing to continue to stick to one another and to that article or other surfaces with which they come in contact. Other small fibers or particles also accumulate with these clothing fibers, including human and animal hair and skin cells, plant fibers, and pollen, dust, and microorganisms. The etymology of the modern word "lint" is related to "linting", the term used for the cultivation of the shorter fibers from the cotton plant ( Gossypium), also called "lint", from which lower-quality cotton products are manufactured. Lint is composed of threads of all colors, which blend hues and may appear to be a uniform grey.