muslin

Muslin comes from French mousseline, borrowed from Italian mussolina, itself from Mussolo, the Italian name for Mosul in northern Iraq. An 1875 mechanical dictionary offers a differing account, claiming the cloth was named for 'Moussol in India,' though the more established path traces back to Mosul.

The word traveled from a place name in Iraq through Italian and French before settling into English as a term for the fabric itself, with its geographic origin fading from everyday use.

Muslin is a doublet of mousseline, the French word for the same fine fabric — two English-adjacent forms descended from the same root.