[f. FELL v.; in some senses perh. repr. OE. fięll: see FALL sb.]
1. The action of the vb. FELL in various senses.
a. A knockdown blow.
1877. Holderness Gloss., s.v. ‘If thoo disn’t ’mind ah sal be givin tha a fell inoo.’
b. A cutting down of timber; concr. the timber cut down at one season; = FALL sb.1 14.
1648. Cromwell, in Carlyle, Lett. & Sp. (1871), I. 280. With copses and ordinary fells.
1663. Pepys, Diary, 11 Dec. When a fell is made, they leave here and there a grown tree.
1727. Bradley, Fam. Dict., s.v. Coppice, Leave young Trees enough, you may take down the worst at the next Fell.
1767. A. Young, Farmer’s Lett. People, 156. A small fell will amount to … thirty pounds.
1888. Rider Haggard, Col. Quaritch, I. x. 172–3. The trees were gone…. ‘Cut down this spring fell.’
c. The sewing down (a fold, etc.) level with the cloth (see FELL v. 6); concr. a ‘felled’ seam.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., Fell. (Sewing.) A form of hem in which one edge is folded over the other and sewed down; or in which one edge is left projecting and is sewed down over the previous seam.
1885. Brietzcke & Rooper, Plain Needlewk., 29. The fell … means, hemming neatly the turned down edge on to the material itself.
1885. Mrs. Croly, Man. Needlework, 9. Hem, fell, gather and buttonhole.
d. A ‘fall’ of lambs. Obs. exc. dial.
1625. B. Jonson, Pan’s Anniversary. So shall the first of all our fells be thine.
1823. in Moor Suffolk Words.
2. ‘The line of termination of a web in the process of weaving, formed by the last weft-thread driven up by the lay; the line to which the warp is at any instant wefted’ (Ogilvie).
1874. in Knight, Dict. Mech., s.v.
1882. in Caulfeild, Dict. Needlewk., s.v. Felling.
3. Comb., as fell wood, timber ready to be felled; fellable wood.
1736. Neal, Hist. Purit., III. 21. The Londoners were distressed the following Winter for Coals, which obliged them to have recourse to the digging Turf, and cutting down all fell Wood on the Estates of Delinquents within fifty miles of London.
