n.

1. Fine, downy wool growing beneath the outer hair of the Cashmere goat.
2. A soft fabric made of this wool or of similar fibers.

[After KASHMIR.]

from Kashmiri
This word originated in India

It is the name of a valley, of a high-altitude goat that lives in this valley, and of the ultrafine wool that grows under the outer hair of this goat. It is also the name of the principal language spoken by people who live in the valley. English has developed two different spellings that try to approximate its sound in its native language. In English, the place and the language start with a K, but the goat and its wool with a C.

The cashmere goat now lives in other places too. Today sixty percent of the cashmere wool in the world is produced in China, including Tibet; other major producers are Nepal, Afghanistan, Iraq, Australia, and New Zealand. With the price of cashmere wool nearing $200 a pound, a few growers in the United States have also begun to raise cashmere goats. But the weavers of Kashmir first brought the wool to the attention of the English, so cashmere remains our name for it. It is recorded in English as early as 1822.

To get the cashmere wool from under the goat's outer hair, you can comb it out, gently, during the two times a year when the goat is shedding. Each goat produces less than three ounces of this wool in a year, so it takes three goats to make even a small scarf and thirty or more to make a blanket. Cashmere is said to be the finest and lightest wool in the world, except for the rare shahtoosh wool from the serow goat-antelope of Tibet.

The Kashmiri language belongs to the Dardic branch of the Indo-Iranian branch of our Indo-European family. There are more than four million speakers of Kashmiri in Indian Kashmir. Aside from the name itself, no other Kashmiri words have been imported into today's English.

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For more information on cashmere, visit Britannica.com.

Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has 2 meanings:

Meaning #1: a soft fabric made from the wool of the Cashmere goat

Meaning #2: the wool of the Kashmir goat

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - kashmir

Nederlands (Dutch)
kasjmier(en)

Français (French)
n. - (lainage) en cachemire

Deutsch (German)
n. - Kaschmir

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (ύφασμα) κασμίρι

Italiano (Italian)
cachemire

Português (Portuguese)
n. - cashmere (m)

Русский (Russian)
кашемир

Español (Spanish)
n. - cachemira

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - kaschmir

中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
开士米羊毛, 羊绒, 开士米羊毛织品

中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 開士米羊毛, 羊絨, 開士米羊毛織品

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 캐시미어 옷감

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - カシミヤ, カシミヤ製品

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) صوف ناعم‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮צמר קשמיר‬

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cashmere	cashmere mist
Cashmere Sweaters	Donna Karan Cashmere