apron

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
apron/ˈeɪprən/

▶noun

• 1 a protective garment covering the front of one's clothes and tied at the back.

• 2 a small area adjacent to another larger area or structure.

  ■ an area on an airfield used for manoeuvring or parking aircraft.

  ■ (also apron stage) a strip of stage that projects in front of the curtain.

• 3 an endless conveyor made of overlapping plates.

– phrases
tied to someone's apron strings under someone's influence and control to an excessive degree.

– derivatives
aproned adjective.

– origin ME naperon, from OFr., dimin. of nape, nappe ‘tablecloth’, from L. mappa ‘napkin’; the n was lost by wrong division of a napron.