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A general name for the raw material, such as cotton, flax, hemp, etc., used in textile manufactures. Fiber gun, a kind of steam gun for converting, wood, straw, etc., into fiber. The material is shut up in the gun with steam, air, or gas at a very high pressure which is afterward relieved suddenly by letting a lid at t…

capable of being molded, into form by art; relating to pottery or to molding in any soft material. Fictile earth is more fragile than crude earth. Bacon. The earliest specimens of Italian fictile art. C. Wordsworth. Fictile ware, ware made of any material which is molded or shaped while soft; hence, pottery of any sor…

An artist who models or forms statues and reliefs in any plastic material. [R.] Elmes.

A mode of expressing abstract or immaterial ideas by words which suggest pictures or images from the physical world; pictorial language; a trope; hence, any deviation from the plainest form of statement. To represent the imagination under the figure of a wing. Macaulay.

The material of which fillets are made; also, fillets, collectively.

A kind of silk thread less glossy than floss, and spun from coarser material. It is much used in embroidery instead of floss.

Defiled with filth, whether material or moral; nasty; dirty; polluted; foul; impure; obscene. "In the filthy-mantled pool." Shak. He which is filthy let him be filthy still. Rev. xxii. 11.

Made of fine materials; light; delicate; as, fine linen or silk.

able of sustaining intense heat without fusion, usually made of fire clay or of siliceous material, with some cementing substance, and used for lining fire boxes, etc. -- Fire brigade, an organized body of men for extinguished fires. -- Fire bucket. See under Bucket. -- Fire bug, an incendiary; one who, from malice…

The act or process of rendering anything incombustible; also, the materials used in the process.

g display of light, or a figure or figures in plain or colored fire, by the combustion of materials that burn in some peculiar manner, as gunpowder, sulphur, metallic filings, and various salts. The most common feature of fireworks is a paper or pasteboard tube filled with the combustible material. A number of these tu…

ited States, the protecting of angles and breaks in walls of frame houses with waterproof material, tarred paper, or the like. Cf. Filleting.

and thus liable to be lost. -- Float ore, water-worn particles of ore; fragments of vein material found on the surface, away from the vein outcrop. Raymond. -- Float stone (Arch.), a siliceous stone used to rub stonework or brickwork to a smooth surface. -- Float valve, a valve or cock acted upon by a float. See Flo…

. Raymond. Floor cloth, a heavy fabric, painted, varnished, or saturated, with waterproof material, for covering floors; oilcloth. -- Floor cramp, an implement for tightening the seams of floor boards before nailing them in position. -- Floor light, a frame with glass panes in a floor. -- Floor plan. (a) (Shipbuildi…

Material for the construction of a floor or floors.

ks in which the arrangement of the minute crystals shows the lines of flow of thew molten material before solidification; -- also called fluxion structure.

t their surface, or within their substance, light different in color from the mass of the material, as when green crystals of fluor spar afford blue reflections. It is due not to the difference in the color of a distinct surface layer, but to the power which the substance has of modifying the light incident upon it. Th…

be prepared nor kept in glass vessels. If set free it immediately attacks the containing material, so that it was not isolated until 1886. It is a pungent, corrosive, colorless gas. Symbol F. Atomic weight 19.

A similar channel or groove made in wood or other material, esp. in plaited cloth, as in a lady's ruffle.

ded; passing into each other by subtle gradations; -- said of colors or of the surface or material on which the colors are laid.