fulling

Pluralfullings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of full.

   By the river, the workers were fulling lengths of woven wool.

   Fulling the fabric shrank and thickened it into a dense felt.

   Note

   One spelling serves three different verbs called full. The cloth-worker's verb thickens wool by soaking, beating and pressing, and is also called waulking or walking. A transitive verb means "to baptise". A third means becoming full or wholly illuminated, as the moon does. The surrounding words decide which is meant. As a gerund, the cloth sense shades into the noun for the process.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The process of cleansing and compacting woven wool cloth so that it thickens and becomes denser.

   Fulling was once done by trampling the wet cloth underfoot.

   The mill specialized in fulling before the wool went to the dyers.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The religious rite of baptism, by which water is used to admit a person into the Christian church.

   The infant's fulling was held at the font before the whole congregation.

   He could recall nothing of his own fulling, having been only a few weeks old.

   Similarbaptism, christening

   Note

   A word with its own history, apart from the cloth-mill noun spelled the same way. It comes from Middle English fulling or fullynge, built on fullen or fulwen, "to baptise". Both words look like full + -ing, but the full here is the old verb of baptism. The process of thickening wool belongs to a different etymology, and context tells the two apart: one happens at the font, the other at the mill.

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