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PlainSpell

tapestry

/ˈtæpəstɹi/noun, verb

tapestry is a noun meaning “A heavy woven cloth, often with decorative pictorial designs, normally hung on walls” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled T-A-P-E-S-T-R-Y and has 3 syllables, and it appears 1.7 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of tapestry is tapestries.

What does tapestry mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A heavy woven cloth, often with decorative pictorial designs, normally hung on walls.

  2. 2

    Anything with variegated or complex details.

verb

  1. 1

    To decorate with tapestry, or as if with a tapestry.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce tapestry?

  • /ˈtæpəstɹi/

Tapestry has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-tapestry.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of tapestry

  • tapestries plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • tapestrying participle, present
  • tapestried participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is tapestry?

Tapestry appears 1.7 times per million words in written English, the 21,209th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Tapestry in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchtapisserie (heavy woven cloth), mosaïque (anything with variegated or complex details), tapisser (to decorate with tapestry)
GermanWandteppich, Bildteppich, Bildwirkerei, Tapisserie, Gobelin (heavy woven cloth)
Portuguesetapeçaria (heavy woven cloth)
Spanishtapiz (heavy woven cloth), tapizar (to decorate with tapestry)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does tapestry come from?

From Middle English tapestrie, from Old French tapisserie (“tapestry”), from Ancient Greek τάπης (tápēs), from an Iranian source.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).