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ragile; not tough or tenacious. Farewell, thou pretty, brittle piece Of fine-cut crystal. Cotton. Brittle silver ore, the mineral stephanite.

cloth of exceedingly fine texture, used by the ancients. It is disputed whether it was of cotton, linen, or silk. [Written also byss and byssin.]

f flat sea urchins belonging to the Clypeastroidea. -- Oil cake the refuse of flax seed, cotton seed, or other vegetable substance from which oil has been expressed, compacted into a solid mass, and used as food for cattle, for manure, or for other purposes. -- To have one's cake dough, to fail or be disappointed in…

Plain white cloth made from cotton, but which receives distinctive names according to quality and use, as, super calicoes, shirting calicoes, unbleached calicoes, etc. [Eng.] The importation of printed or stained colicoes appears to have been coeval with the establishment of the East India Company. Beck (Draper's Dict.…

A fabric made, in imitation of linen cambric, of fine, hardspun cotton, often with figures of various colors; -- also called cotton cambric, and cambric muslin.

bric originally made of camel's hair, now chiefly of goat's hair and silk, or of wool and cotton. [Sometimes written camelot and camblet.]

ender, cylindrical body of tallow, containing a wick composed of loosely twisted linen of cotton threads, and used to furnish light. How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. Shak.

A machine for spreading out cotton cloths to prepare them for printing.

See Cotton flannel.

A cotton stuff showing a fine cord on one side and a satiny surface on the other.

A strong cloth made of hemp, flax, or cotton; -- used for tents, sails, etc. By glimmering lanes and walls of canvas led. Tennyson.

A sort of cotton so short and fine thet it can not be spun, used in the East Indies to line palanquins, to make mattresses, etc.

An instrument for disentangling and arranging the fibers of cotton, wool, flax, etc.; or for cleaning and smoothing the hair of animals; -- usually consisting of bent wire teeth set closely in rows in a thick piece of leather fastened to a back.

it comes from the carding machine. Carding engine, Carding machine, a machine for carding cotton, wool, or other fiber, by subjecting it to the action of cylinders, or drum covered with wire-toothed cards, revoling nearly in contact with each other, at different rates of speed, or in opposite directions, The staple iss…

A heavy woven or felted fabric, usually of wool, but also of cotton, hemp, straw, etc.; esp. a floor covering made in breadths to be sewed together and nailed to the floor, as distinguished from a rug or mat; originally, also, a wrought cover for tables. Tables and beds covered with copes instead of carpets and coverle…

A dress fabric made of fine wool, or of fine wool and cotton, in imitation of the original cashmere. Cashmere shawl, a rich and costly shawl made of cashmere; -- other called camel's-hair shawl.

A cloth with a cotton wart, and a woof of very fine wool, or wool and silk.

tructive, Many of them are popularly called worms, as the cutworm, cankerworm, army worm, cotton worm, silkworm.

A substance composed essentially of gun cotton and camphor, and when pure resembling ivory in texture and color, but variously colored to imitate coral, tortoise shell, amber, malachite, etc. It is used in the manufacture of jewelry and many small articles, as combs, brushes, collars, and cuffs; -- originaly called xyl…

A thin, loosewoven cotton cloth, such as is used in pressing cheese curds.