a. [f. FILM sb. + -Y1.]
† 1. Of membranous structure. Obs.
1661. Lovell, Hist. Anim. & Min., Introd. 37. The ventricle, what nourishment it yeeldeth, may easily be conjectured from its constitution, it is filmy, and therefore cold, hard, dry, and glutinous.
1665. Evelyn, Diary, 9 Feb. Its [a pelican’s] lower beak which, being filmy, stretches to a prodigious wideness, when it devours a great fish.
2. Forming a thin pellicle or coating.
1628. Wotton, Letter to Sir Edmund Bacon, 14 Dec., in Reliq. Wotton. (1685), 441. Among other discourse he shewed me a little excrescence that he hath beginning upon the uttermost ball of his eyes, a filmy matter, like the rudiment of a Pin and Web as they call it.
1735. N. Torriano, Gangr. Sore Throat, 94. As these filmy Membranes came away, the Weasand or Throat became freer.
1771. Priestley, in Phil. Trans., LXII. 219. The water was become quite vapid, and had deposited a filmy kind of matter.
1853. Kane, Grinnell Exp., xxxvii. (1856), 344. The area of filmy ice that was between the edges of the lead had been thrust under the floe, thus aiding the process of re-cementation.
1885. R. Buchanan, Annan Water, iii. The salt spray of the ocean was blown upon it [the barn], encrusting its black sides with a species of filmy salt.
3. Resembling a film, of extremely delicate texture, gauze-like; consisting of slender filaments, as of gossamer.
1604. Drayton, Owle, 764.
| The spyders woue their webbe euen in his wings: | |
| And in his traine their filmie netting cast. |
1664. Power, Experimental Philosophy, I. 30. If you unsheath her [Cow-Lady’s] body, and take off her spotted short crustaceous wings, you shall find under them another pair of filmy Tiffany long wings, like those of Flyes, which lye folded up, and cased within the former, of both which pair she makes use in flying.
1740. Somerville, Hobbinol, II. 190.
| Thus the luxurious Wasp, | |
| Voracious Insect, by the fragrant Dregs | |
| Allur’d, and in the viscous Nectar plung’d, | |
| His filmy Pennons struggling flaps in vain, | |
| Lost in a Flood of Sweets. |
1813. Scott, Trierm., III. xi.
| It seem’d a veil of filmy lawn, | |
| By some fantastic fairy drawn | |
| Around enchanted pile. |
a. 1839. Praed, Poems (1864), II. 21, ‘The County Ball.’
| The filmy shroud | |
| Of many a mild transparent cloud | |
| Hides, yet adorns thee. |
1871. R. Ellis, Catullus, lxix. 3.
| Not tho’ a gift should seek, some robe most filmy, to move her; | |
| Nor for a cherish’d gem’s clarity, lucid of hue. |
fig. 1794. Coleridge, Lines on a Friend who died of a Frenzy Fever Induced by Calumnious Reports.
| Such chill dew | |
| Wan Indolence on each young blossom shed; | |
| And vanity her filmy net-work spread, | |
| With eye that roll’d around in asking gaze, | |
| And tongue that traffick’d in the trade of praise. |
1820. Hazlitt, Lect. Dram. Lit., 75. Nature lies open to them like a book, and was not to them ‘invisible, or dimly seen’ through a veil of words and filmy abstractions.
1856. R. A. Vaughan, Mystics (1860), II. IX. i. 120. The filmiest evanescence of the feeling has to be detained and anatomized.
b. Filmy-fern, Filmy-leaf, names of a genus of ferns, Hymenophyllum. (Cf. film-fern, FILM sb. 7.)
1829. Loudon, Encycl. Plants, 886. Hymenophyllum, Filmy-Leaf.
1861. Miss Pratt, Flower. Pl., VI. 154. Order Filices … (Filmy Fern).
1882. The Garden, 5 Aug., 111/3. The Filmy Fern House in the Pine-apple Nursery.
4. Covered with or as with a film; beclouded, dim, hazy.
1825. J. Neal, Brother Jonathan, III. 345. The prophet came up to his elbow; with eyes no longer white or filmy; but clear and lustrous; full of strange beauty, and preternatural brightness.
1833. Ht. Martineau, Briery Creek, i. 3. Then a smile passed over the philosopher’s countenance as his eye settled on the filmy orb of the moon, already showing itself, though the sun had not yet touched the western verge of the prairie.
1864. Lowell, Fireside Trav., 132. Gradually the filmy trees defined themselves, the aerial enchantment lost its potency, and we came up with common prose islands that had so late been magical and poetic.
5. Comb.
1821. Shelley, To Night, iv.
| Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, | |
| Murmur’d like a noon-tide bee. |
Hence Filmily adv.; Filminess.
1727. Bailey, vol. II., Filminess.
1831. Fraser’s Mag., III. 483/2. The haze and filminess dropped from our ‘optic nerve’ in the twinkling of an eye.
1870. H. Macmillan, Bible Teach., xiii. 262. The milk-white filminess of the onyx.
1890. Harper’s Mag., LXXXI. Oct., 803/2. If they perceive them at all it is as something vauge and diaphanous, something that filmily wavers before their senses and teases them.
