Meaning

noun fiber of the flax plant that is made into thread and woven into linen fabric

noun plant of the genus Linum that is cultivated for its seeds and for the fibers of its stem

originFrom Middle English flax, from Old English fleax, from Proto-Germanic *flahsą, from Proto-Indo-European *pleḱ- (“to plait”). Cognate with Old Frisian flax, Dutch vlas, Old High German flahs (German Flachs); the Northern Germanic (and most likely the Gothic too) stem is different.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0