Today's Wordle Answer #488 - October 20, 2022 Solution And Hints

Wordle puzzles are wonderful mental exercises, but they can quickly become frustrating if you can't figure out the solution before running out of attempts. But we're always here to help with hints for players who don't like to be spoon-fed the answer, and we also have the solution for players who don't mind the spoiler. 

Today's word has two vowels, "E" and "I," as the second and fourth letters, respectively, and there are no repeating letters. The answer is a noun, and the name of a sturdy (usually blue) cotton fabric used to make pants that have become an American wardrobe staple. The fabric can be used to make other items of clothing, as well, but you'll get closer to the answer if you're thinking about pants rather than anything else. Here's a final hint if you're still unsure: the last letter is "M." Spoiler alert: we'll reveal the answer after the next image, so you might want to cease your scrolling if you still want to think about it.

The solution to today's Wordle puzzle (#488 — October 20, 2022) is denim. It's a pretty popular word, but you might be using it incorrectly. Denim is frequently used interchangeably with jeans, but that's only partially correct. All jeans are denim but not all denim is jeans, because all jeans are made of denim but denim cannot be made of jeans. After all, denim is a raw fabric material made of 100% cotton twill.

The etymology of the word denim comes with an interesting history. For a while, the appellation system for fabrics was to name them after places where they were once made. Denim gets its name from Nîmes, a city in France famous for its textiles. Because the fabric is a heavy serge, which itself means a "coarse, colored, twilled cotton cloth," it was originally called serge de Nîmes, which literally means "serge from Nîmes." The "s" in Nîmes is not pronounced in French, so when the term came into the English language, it was written as "serge de Nim" and later "serge denim." Eventually, this was simply shortened to denim, according to Etymonline. 

We didn't choose any of the recommended starter words; instead, we went with the word haunt as our opening guess, followed by the word noise, then the word infer. By the fourth try, we had gathered enough info to guess correctly, so we finished faster than we did yesterday. We hope you do even better, and you can check out these Wordle-like games to further scratch your puzzle itch.