Lent or lint?
lent is a noun meaning “A period of the ecclesiastical year preceding Easter, traditionally involving…”; lint is a noun meaning “Clinging fuzzy fluff that clings to fabric or accumulates in one's pockets or…”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) lent is about 5.8 times as common as lint.
What is the difference between lent and lint?
| lent | lint | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb | noun, verb |
| Meaning | A period of the ecclesiastical year preceding Easter, traditionally involving temporary abstention from certain foods and pleasures The 40 days preceding Lazarus Saturday, the Saturday preceding Holy Week | Clinging fuzzy fluff that clings to fabric or accumulates in one's pockets or navel etc A fine material made by scraping cotton or linen cloth; used for dressing wounds To perform a static check on (source code) to detect stylistic or programmatic errors |
| Example | Hezekiah gave up vaping for Lent | Clean the lint out of the vacuum cleaner's filter |
| Forms | lents | lints |
| Pronunciation | /lɛnt/ | /lɪnt/ |
| In writing | 5.6 times per million words | about once in every 1 million words |
Sources: lent and lint in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of lent and lint
lent
- 1
Alternative letter-case form of Lent
- 2
A period of the ecclesiastical year preceding Easter, traditionally involving temporary abstention from certain foods and pleasures
Hezekiah gave up vaping for Lent
- 3
The 40 days preceding Lazarus Saturday, the Saturday preceding Holy Week
- 4
The 46 days preceding Easter, reckoned as 40 days by excluding Sundays
- 5
UKEllipsis of Lent term
- 6
vassa, period of the Buddhist lent during the rainy season
lint
- 1
Clinging fuzzy fluff that clings to fabric or accumulates in one's pockets or navel etc
Clean the lint out of the vacuum cleaner's filter
- 2
To perform a static check on (source code) to detect stylistic or programmatic errors
You should lint your JavaScript code before committing it
- 3
A fine material made by scraping cotton or linen cloth; used for dressing wounds
- 4
The fibrous coat of thick hairs covering the seeds of the cotton plant
- 5
Raw cotton ready for baling
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, lent or lint?
lent appears 5.6 times per million words; lint about once in every 1 million words.
lent 5.6 times per million wordslint about once in every 1 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search lent vs lint?
“lent vs lint” is searched about 50 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“lint vs lent”, “lent or lint”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.