A small piece of cloth or paper used at a meal to wipe the fingers or lips and to protect garments. She placed a napkin on her lap before starting her meal.
She packed a few sanitary napkins in her overnight bag.
Archaic or dialectal: a piece of soft cloth or absorbent material used to diaper a baby; a diaper. In Victorian times, mothers laundered dozens of cloth napkins for their infants each week.