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Raw; not spun or wrought; as, sleaved thread or silk. Holinshed.

See Sleave, untwisted thread.

To separate or part the threads of, and arrange them in a reed; -- a term used by weavers. See Sleave, and Sleid.

To entangle; to complicate; to involve in knots; as, to snarl a skein of thread. "Her snarled hair." Spenser.

having different qualities; as, to sort cloths according to their colors; to sort wool or thread according to its fineness. Rays which differ in refrangibility may be parted and sorted from one another. Sir I. Newton.

[Obs.] Thy specular orb Apply to well-dissected kernels; lo! In each observe the slender threads Of first-beginning trees. J. Philips.

n animals, the familiar type is that of a small, more or less ovoid head, with a delicate threadlike cilium, or tail. Called also spermatozoön. In plants the more usual term is antherozoid.

trine, formerly current, of encasement in the male (see Encasement), in which the seminal thread, or spermatozoid, was considered as the real animal germ, the head being the true animal head and the tail the body.

egmented, with two or three pairs of spinnerets near the end, by means of which they spin threads of silk to form cocoons, or nests, to protect their eggs and young. Many species spin also complex webs to entrap the insects upon which they prey. The eyes are usually eight in number (rarely six), and are situated on the…

A stitch in lace making used to fill in open spaces with threads resembling a cobweb.

To draw out, and twist into threads, either by the hand or machinery; as, to spin wool, cotton, or flax; to spin goat's hair; to produce by drawing out and twisting a fibrous material. All the yarn she [Penelope] spun in Ulysses' absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths. Shak.

the dorsal side of the spinal column of a vertebrate animal, and usually terminating in a threadlike appendage called the filum terminale; the spinal, or vertebral, marrow; the myelon. The nervous tissue consists of nerve fibers and nerve cells, the latter being confined to the so-called gray matter of the central port…

The long, round, slender rod or pin in spinning wheels by which the thread is twisted, and on which, when twisted, it is wound; also, the pin on which the bobbin is held in a spinning machine, or in the shuttle of a loom.

Spinning mite (Zoöl.), the red spider. -- Spinning wheel, a machine for spinning yarn or thread, in which a wheel drives a single spindle, and is itself driven by the hand, or by the foot acting on a treadle.

der or imaginary axis, and at the same time rising or advancing forward; winding like the thread of a screw; helical.

One of certain minute coiled threads in the coating of some seeds. When moistened these threads protrude in great numbers. Gray.

h a knot at each end, or a hollow cylinder of wood with a ridge at each end, used to wind thread or yarn upon. Spool stand, an article holding spools of thread, turning on pins, -- used by women at their work.

A thread; especially, a warp thread.

Consisting of stamens or threads.

A single pass of a needle in sewing; the loop or turn of the thread thus made.