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cloth-ears

noun

Etymology

The origin of the term is in the wool and cotton mills of Northern England where the noise of the machinery and build-up of cotton dust made it difficult to hear people speaking. The earliest example in print is "I wish you'd listen. Have you got cloth ears?" from Carnival, a novel by Compton Mackenzie (1912).

Definitions

  1. A person who cannot hear clearly or who fails to pay attention to what is said.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for cloth-ears. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA