skain

English

Noun

skain (plural skains)

  1. Alternative form of skean
    • John Ebers
      Knauel, der, A Bottom or Clew of thread or of Yarn, a Hank, a Skain of Yarn or thread [1]
    • George Gregory
      The aim of the rope-maker is to unite the strings of a great number of fibres... This is done by twisting or twining them together... When the fibres are so disposed in a long skain, that their ends succeed each other along its length, without many of them meeting in one place; and this skain is twisted round... the friction on a fibre which we attempt to pull out may be more than its cohesion can overcome... Consequently, if we pull at this twisted skain, we shall not separate it by drawing one parcel out from among the rest, but the whole fibres will break; and if the distribution of the fibres has been a very equable, the skain will be nearly of the same strength in every part.[2]

References
  1. Ebers, John. The new and complete dictionary of the German and English languages ; Composed chiefly after the German dictionaries of Mr. Adelung and of Mr. Schwan publisher: Breitkpf, 1798
  2. Gregory, George. A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. publisher: I. Peirce and S. Etheridge, 1816

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for skain in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)

Anagrams
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.