a. and sb. [ad. L. fictil-em, f. fingĕre to fashion: see -ILE.] A. adj.
1. Capable of being moulded, suitable for making pottery. Now rare.
1675. Evelyn, Terra (1786), 8. I forbear to speak particularly of Fullers-Earth, Tobacco-pipe Clay, dry and astringent, the white Cimolia, and the several fictile clays, because they are not so universal and serviceable to the plough and spade.
fig. 1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev. (1872), I. I. ii. 6. Ours is a most fictile world; and man is the most fingent plastic of creatures.
2. Moulded into form by art; made of earth, clay, etc., by a potter.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 841. Fictile Earth is more Fragile than Crude Earth; And Dry Wood than Greene.
1655. T. Stanley, Hist. Philos., III. 92.
| I was but fool’d | |
| To worship in his room a fictile deity. |
1662. Evelyn, Chalcogr., i. 5. And why may not the Tori, Brawn, or Collops of fat be express’d by these raised Figures, and they Torosæ plump, and … en bon point, as well as Fusil and Fictile ones?
1825. Fosbroke, Encycl. Antiq. (1843), I. 96. The Etruscans, who were famous potters, used to make fictile coffins.
1855. Musgrave, A Ramble through Normandy, 281. Under the cases containing the Tapestry are thousands of curiosities, natural and artificial, fictile and fossil, from various parts of the province.
3. Of or pertaining to the manufacture of earthenware, etc.; having to do with pottery. Also (rarely) Skilled in or devoted to fictile art.
1854. Thoreau, Walden (1863), 281. I was pleased to find that so fictile an art was ever practised in my neighbourhood.
1864. C. P. Smyth, Inher. in Gt. Pyramid, I. i. (1880), 5. That too graphic religion which the fictile nation on the Nile ever delighted in.
1888. Arts & Crafts Catal., 46. And Fictile Craft grew with his [man’s] knowledge.
B. sb. A fictile vessel.
1850. in Weale, Dict. Terms.
1888. Arts & Crafts Catal., 45. These Fictiles tell the story of his first Art-instincts.
Hence Fictileness, the quality or fact of being fictile.
1727. in Bailey, vol. II.
