Fibre, Fiber sb.

Forms: 4 fybre, 7 fiuer, fiver, 7, 9 fiber, 9 fifer (dial.), 7– fibre. [a. F. fibre (= Sp., Pg., It. fibra), ad. L. fibra, of uncertain origin; variously referred by etymologists to L. roots fid- (as in findĕre to split) and fis- or fī- (as in fīlum thread). The spelling fiber is common in the U.S., but is now rare in England.]

  † 1.  After Latin usage: a. A lobe or portion of the liver. b. pl. The entrails. Obs.

1398.  Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., V. xxxix. (1495), 153. The endes of the lyuer hyght fybre for they … beclepyth the stomake.

1598.  Grenewey, Tacitus’ Ann., XIV. x. They accounted it lawfull to offer sacrifice at their altars with the blood of captiues, and aske counsell of their gods by the aspect of mans intrales and fibres.

1601.  Holland, Pliny, I. 342. Some say, that the lobes or fibres in the smal Liuers of certaine Mice and Rats, are commonly found to be as many as the Moone is daies old in euery moneth.

  2.  Phys. One of a number of thread-like bodies or filaments, that enter into the composition of animal (muscular, nervous, etc.) and vegetable tissue. a. in animals. Fibres of Corti: see CORTIAN a.

1607.  Topsell, Four-f. Beasts (1658), 99. His blood is not like other Beasts, for it hath no Fibres or small veins in it, and therefore it is hardly congealed.

1611.  G. Sandys, Ovid’s Met., VI. (1626), 113.

1646.  Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., III. xv. 142. Wormes and Leeches will move both ways; and so will most of those Animals, whose bodies consist of round and annulary fibers, and move by undulation.

1664.  Power, Experimental Philosophy, I. 5. Her wings look like a Sea-fan with black thick ribs or fibers, dispers’d and branch’d through them.

1704.  F. Fuller, Med. Gymn. (1711), 33. The Fibre it self strengthens by Use.

1793.  Holcroft, Lavater’s Physiog., xx. 98. In cold countries the fibres of the tongue must be less flexible.

1808.  A. Parsons, Trav., i. 7. The natives eat the myrtle berries as an astringent; their fibres being rendered extremely lax by the climate, they run to the myrtles as if by instinct, and eat the berries medicinally.

1855.  Bain, The Senses and the Intellect, I. ii. § 4. The optic nerve of one of the eyes might contain as many as a million of fibres.

1888.  J. Martineau, Study Relig., I. II. i. 305. Its two thousand fibres of Corti stretched.

  fig.  1615.  Chapman, Odyss., XVIII. 5.

1638.  Wintoure Grant, in G. Sandys’ Paraphr. Div. Poems, Pref. Verse.

1742.  Young, Nt. Th., v. 1059.

1831.  Carlyle, Misc. (1857), II. 329. Mr. Taylor is simply what they call a Philister; every fibre of him is Philistine.

1847.  Emerson, Poems, Monadnoc, Wks. (Bohn), I. 435.

a. 1853.  Robertson, Addr., ii. (1858), 55. They are bound up in every fibre of my being.

  b.  in plants.

1663.  Cowley, Ode Dr. Harvey, i.

1676.  Hale, Contempl., I. 254. There lies a Worm at the Root of it unseen; but in a moment gnaws asunder the Roots and Fibres of it, and it withers.

1703.  Pope, Vertumnus, 16.

1791.  Hamilton, Berthollet’s Dyeing, I. I. I. iii. 52. Most trees contain fawn coloured particles, inclining more or less to yellow, red, or brown, which, in consequence of this combustion, grow thick, and are at last thrown out of the vascular fibres of the bark, the greatest part of which I have found composed of them.

1838.  T. Thomson, Chem. Org. Bodies, II. v. 984. There is such an attraction between vegetable fibres and watery liquids; for such liquids will ascend through dead vegetable matter.

1865.  Lubbock, Preh. Times, xiii. (1869), 462. They also used the fibres of the cocoa-nut for making threads, with which they fastened together the various parts of their canoes.

  3.  One of the thread-like filaments of organic structure which form a textile or other material substance; also transf. of inorganic substances.

1827.  Faraday, Chem. Manip., ii. 49–50. When a silk fibre will not answer the purpose or cannot be obtained, a fine wire will very conveniently supply its place, and it is only in cases of necessity that recourse should be had to thread, fine twine, or any substance made up of many fibres.

1831.  Babbage, Econ. Manuf., iv. (ed. 3), 32. Twisting the fibres of wool by the fingers would be a most tedious operation: in the common spinning-wheel the velocity of the foot is moderate, but by a very simple contrivance that of the thread is most rapid.

1832.  G. R. Porter, Porcelain & Gl., 282. Delicate different-colored fibres of glass joined with the greatest nicety, and conglutinated into a compact homogeneous mass by fusion.

1878.  Huxley, Physiography, 193. A very liquid lava may be caught by the wind, and drawn out into delicate fibres.

  4.  collect. A substance consisting of fibres, whether animal or vegetable. Also, Fibrous structure.

1810.  Henry, Elem. Chem. (1826), II. 273. The woody fibre … does not undergo any change.

1831.  R. Knox, Cloquet’s Anat., 7. Nervous fibre.—This is the peculiar substance of which the brain and nerves are composed.

1847.  Emerson, Repr. Men, Montaigne, Wks. (Bohn), I. 349. He has contrived to get so much bone and fibre as he wants.

1854.  H. Miller, Footpr. Creat., x. (1874), 183, note. It is rare to find pieces of coal which exhibit the ligneous fibre existing in a state of keeping solid enough to stand the grinding of the lapidary’s wheel.

1858.  Carpenter, Veg. Phys., § 42. Even these primary tissues may be regarded as consisting of other parts still more simple,—namely, membrane and fibre.

  b.  fig.

1855.  Bain, The Senses and the Intellect, III. iv. § 17. When Napoleon described himself as ‘un homme politique,’ we are to interpret the expression as implying a man of the political fibre or grain, a character whose charm of existence was the handling of political combinations, so that his mind could dwell with ease in this region of ideas.

1871.  Bagehot, Physics & Pol. (1876), 47. Somehow or other civilisation does not make men effeminate or un-warlike now as it once did. There is an improvement in our fibre—moral, if not physical.

1885.  E. Eggleston, Social Life in the Colonies, in Century Mag., XXX. 398/1. This love of fierce and cruel sport was in the fiber, and had the sanction of ancient usage and aristocratic example.

  5.  esp. A fibrous substance fit for use in textile fabrics.

1870.  Yeats, Nat. Hist. Comm., 70. Vegetable fibres find India their most prolific home.

1875.  D. Kay, in Encycl. Brit. (ed. 9), I. 565/1. The most important fibre is the crin vegetal, or vegetable horse hair, produced from the dwarf palm.

1879.  J. Paton, Ibid., IX. 131/2. Fibres, Textile, in their widest acceptation include all substances capable of being spun, woven, or felted.

1892.  K. Tynan, A House of Roses, in The Speaker, VI. 3 Sept., 290/1. In the winter they [the roses] were swathed in cocoanut fibre and sacking.

  6.  A subdivision of a root, a small root or rootlet; occas. of a twig.

1656–81.  Blount, Glossogr., Fibers, the smal threads, or hair-like strings of roots.

1694.  Acc. Sev. Late Voy., II. (1711), 61. This Root consists of many small Fibers, and is not red.

1787.  Winter, Syst. Husb., 153. Their numerous fibres or lateral roots will extend themselves horizontally.

1807.  J. E. Smith, Phys. Bot., 105. After they [plants] have begun to throw out new fibres, it is more or less dangerous, or even fatal, to remove them.

1810.  Scott, Lady of L., I. xxv.

1821.  Shelley, Prometh. Unb., I. 154.

1840.  Spurdens, Suppl. Voc. E. Anglia, Fifers … fibrous roots.

  fig.  a. 1679.  T. Goodwin, Wks. (1697), IV. II. 65. To apply Christ is not simply to take him into thy thoughts only, and think thus and thus barely of him, but to strike forth a sprig or fibre from every faculty into him, to be rooted in him, to draw nourishment from him, to digest him, to give up thy soul to him, and to be one with him.

1869.  Goulburn, Purs. Holiness, vii. 55. Whatever fibres there are in our nature, by which we cling and cleave to those around us, these fibres must all throw themselves out towards Him.

1879.  Farrar, St. Paul (1883), 177. Generous as Peter was, it would have required an almost superhuman amount of confidence to receive at once under his roof a man who had tried by the utmost violence to extirpate the very fibres of the Church.

  † 7.  In Kepler’s system of celestial physics; see quot. Obs.

[1618.  Kepler, Epit. Astron. Copernic., v. (1635), 643. Posuimus, in cuiuslibet planetæ corpore duplices inesse fibras … fibræ latitudinis fere quidem in parallelo situ manent toto circuitu.]

1715.  trans. Gregorys Astron., I. I. lxviii. 139. [The Planet] will come nearer to the Sun, till the Right lines drawn according to the direction of this part (that is, the Fibres along which this attractive Virtue is propagated from the Sun) … are no more inclined to the Sun. Ibid., lxix. 143. In each Planet there are Fibres (which he calls from their Office, the Fibres of Latitude).

  8.  attrib. and Comb., as fibre-cultivation, -machine; also fibre-basket (see quot.); fibre-cell (see quot. 1884); fibre-gun (see quot.).

1884.  Syd. Soc. Lex., *Fibre-basket, Schultze’s term for the sustentacular tissue of the retina.

1878.  Bell, Gegenbauer’s Comp. Anat., 31. The … contractile *fibre-cells constitute the first form.

1884.  Syd. Soc. Lex., Fibre-cell, Kölliker’s term for the fusiform, nucleated, cellular structures which form the involuntary muscles.

1892.  Pall Mall G., 21 July, 7/1. The progress made in *fibre cultivation in the colony.

1874.  Knight, Dict. Mech., *Fiber-gun. A device for disintegrating vegetable fiber.

1887.  Pall Mall G., 6 May, 12/1. A few leaves … were recently passed through Death’s *fibre machine.