Underwear and nightwear, often made with fabrics such as lace, silk or fine cotton.
In French, lingerie first meant the making and trade of linge, linen, and still covers more than English allows: items for men as well as women, household linen, the fine light cloth such items are made from, and, in a house or an institution, the room where linen is kept and cared for. Its narrower sense, underwear and especially women’s underwear, is the one English took: the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary defines lingerie as women’s underwear, a word used especially by shops.
In English it covers women’s underwear and pieces such as the chemise, which Oxford defines as underwear or a nightdress, and the négligée, a dressing gown of very thin cloth. A French text may mean the wider sense: lingerie for men, or the linen room, which hotel listings in English call the linen room or the laundry.
In job listings
Lingerie appears in sales roles in department stores’ lingerie departments and in a house’s lingerie and swimwear category, and behind the sales floor in stock, events and merchandising roles for lingerie departments and underwear lines. See current lingerie roles.
