fabric
Pluralfabrics
Verbfabrics, fabricking, fabricked
Pluralfabrics
Formsfabrics, fabricking, fabricked
- 1
- 2
- 3The framework that underlies and holds together a structure such as a society, institution, or system of ideas.
Repeated scandals eroded the fabric of public trust in the institution.
Small family farms were once woven into the very fabric of the regional economy.
Similarframework, structure, foundation, makeup
Note
The weaving image survives in set phrases: the fabric of society, the moral fabric, the fabric of our lives, the fabric of the universe. Its usual verbs keep the cloth in view, since such a fabric is torn, eroded or woven into. Reserve it for abstractions like trust, community or relationships. For the physical skeleton of an object, structure or framework is the plainer choice.
- 4The physical material making up a building, such as its walls, roof, and floors.
Decades of soot had blackened the fabric of the cathedral.
The architects preserved the original fabric wherever the new floor plan allowed.
Similarstructure
Note
Architects and conservationists use the word for a building's substance, such as masonry, timber and plaster, as distinct from its design or purpose. So a church may date back to the eleventh century while most of its fabric is fifteenth century or later. Conservation practice speaks of "historic fabric" and tries to lose as little of it as possible. Unlike the archaic "building" sense, this one is fully current.
- 5A network of interconnected nodes whose links, when diagrammed, resemble the weave of a textile.
The new fabric connects thousands of servers with uniform low latency.
Adding nodes to the fabric requires no downtime or rewiring.
Note
Networking and chip design borrowed the cloth image for interconnects in which many nodes are linked by redundant paths, so that a diagram of the connections looks woven. The word often travels in compounds such as switch fabric and unified fabric. It also stretches to whole systems: the Internet itself can be called "a fabric of computers connected by routers."
- 6The fired clay material from which a pottery artifact is made.
Archaeologists matched the coarse fabric of the pot shards to a nearby kiln site.
A fine white fabric distinguishes the imported wares from local pottery.
Note
An archaeologist treats the clay body of a pot as evidence: its matrix, temper, inclusions, color and hardness. Sherds are sorted into fabrics, so the word is freely pluralized ("coarse fabrics," "imported fabrics"). Matching a fabric to a production source lets excavated finds be compared across sites.
- 7The appearance of the crystalline grains that make up a rock.
Geologists noted a strongly aligned fabric in the metamorphic samples.
The granite's coarse fabric is visible without a microscope.
Note
Petrologists mean more than looks: the word covers how a rock's grains are arranged and oriented. A preferred alignment, whether a planar or a linear fabric, records the stresses under which the rock deformed. That makes fabric analysis a core tool of structural geology. The word is countable here, so a rock can show more than one fabric.
- 8To cover an object or surface with fabric.
The upholstery shop will fabric the headboard in pale blue linen.
Designers often fabric office partitions to soften the sound in open workplaces.
Note
A trade verb, at home in decorating and event planning: Mindy Weiss and Lisbeth Levine's The Wedding Book (2016) heads a section "Fabricking and Carpeting a Room." Watch the spelling. Like picnic, it adds a k before -ed and -ing (fabricked, fabricking), while fabrics stays plain. In formal writing, cover or upholster is the safer choice.
Less common meanings
- 9The structure or make of something; the manner in which its parts are united; workmanship.
Eighteenth-century anatomists marveled at the delicate fabric of the eye.
He admired the curious fabric of the spider's web glistening with dew.
Note
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century prose used the word for how anything is put together: the fabric of the body, of a watch, of the heavens. In a phrase like "cloth of a beautiful fabric" it shades into the texture of cloth, where the meaning still lives. For other things it is archaic, and modern English says structure, make or workmanship instead.
- 10An edifice or building, especially a stately or imposing one.
After the earthquake, scarcely a stone of the venerable fabric remained standing.
Anon out of the earth a fabric huge / Rose like an exhalation.
1667, John Milton, Paradise LostNote
Here the word means the building as a thing made, and its history shows why: French fabrique, from Latin fabrica, a workshop or product of craft, from faber, the artisan. Forge comes from the same source. Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) has "a fabric huge" rising "like an exhalation"; Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest (1791) calls an abbey "the fabric." Now rare, it suits only deliberately literary prose.
- 11The act or process of constructing something; construction or fabrication.
The king set aside funds for the fabric of a royal hospital.
He oversaw the fabric of the bridge from the first piling to the last stone.
Note
Here the word names the making, not the thing made, which keeps it nearest the workshop of Latin fabrica. It is easily misread. When Henry Hart Milman's History of Latin Christianity (1855) has tithes set aside "for the fabric of the churches," a modern reader hears the material of a building. The sense is archaic now. In current English, say construction or building.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of fabric apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
Borrowed from French fabrique, from Latin fabrica ("a workshop, art, trade, or structure"), which comes from faber ("artisan, workman"). It is a doublet of fabrica and of forge.