rayon

noun

1. a regenerated, semisynthetic textile filament made from cellulose, cotton linters, or wood chips by treating these with caustic soda and carbon disulfide and passing the resultant solution, viscose, through spinnerets.
2. fabric made of this filament.

adjective

3. made of rayon.

noun

1. any of a number of textile fibres made from wood pulp or other forms of cellulose
2. any fabric made from such a fibre
3. (modifier) consisting of or involving rayona rayon shirt

n.

1924, chosen by National Retail Dry Goods Association of America, probably from French rayon “beam of light, ray,” from rai (see ray (n.1)), which also was used in Middle English as a name for a type of cloth. So called because it is shiny. A more marketable alternative than the original patented name, artificial silk (1884), or the intervening attempt, Glos, which was “killed by ridicule” [“Draper’s Record,” June 14, 1924].