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Fineness; spruceness; smartness. [Obs.] Too much pickedness is not manly. B. Jonson.

h mint as a place of deposit for certain sample coins taken for a trial of the weight and fineness of metal before it is sent from the mint. Mushet.

ess of parting) of alloying a button of nearly pure gold with enough silver to reduce the fineness so as to allow acids to attack and remove all metals except the gold; -- called also inquartation. Compare Parting.

dy of the mint (Coinage), a small allowed deviation from the legal standard of weight and fineness; -- called also tolerance.

Not enduring proof or trial; not of standard purity or fineness; disallowed; rejected. [Obs.] Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them. Jer. vi. 30.

istered steel by repeated heating, rolling, and tilting, to increase its malleability and fineness of texture.

es; 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.

The quality or state of being subtile; thinness; fineness; as, the subtility of air or light.

Very fine, or most fine; being of surpassing fineness; of extra nice or fine quality; as, superfine cloth.

Bought at the festival of St. Audrey. [Obs.] And gird in your waist, For more fineness, with a tawdry lace. Spenser.

Fig.: Composition; quality; fineness. [Obs.] A neat courtier, Of a most elegant thread. B. Jonson. Air thread, the fine white filaments which are seen floating in the air in summer, the production of spiders; gossamer. -- Thread and thrum, the good and bad together. [Obs.] Shak. -- Thread cell (Zoöl.), a lasso cell.…

ed, or crisped, species of hair which grows on sheep and some other animals, and which in fineness sometimes approaches to fur; -- chiefly applied to the fleecy coat of the sheep, which constitutes a most essential material of clothing in all cold and temperate climates.