transitive verbrets, retting, retted

• Soak (flax or hemp) in water to soften it and separate the fibers.

  ‘the flax has been retted and used as linen to produce the fabric’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Under old methods, hemp was cut and allowed to lie in the fields for weeks until it retted enough so the fiber could be pulled off by hand.’
  • ‘Flax was grown in the country districts, ‘retted’ and ‘heckled’ in small ponds and mills, spun and woven in the single-storey ‘improved’ cottages of the villages.’

  Synonyms

  dampen, damp, moisten, humidify