silk

Pluralsilks

Formssilks, silking, silked

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A fine, soft cloth woven from the fibers of the silkworm.

   The merchant sold bolts of fine silk imported from China.

   She wore a blouse of cream-colored silk to the gala.

   Note

   Once the fiber is woven into cloth, the noun can be counted: silks are kinds or pieces of the fabric. It also works freely before other nouns and inside compounds, where it names the material rather than the object. Robert W. Chambers's The Younger Set (1907) dresses its young men "silk-hatted, frock-coated."

2. 2
   noununcountable

   A fine fiber produced by silkworms and other arthropods such as spiders.

   Spiders spin silk to trap prey and anchor their webs.

   Each silkworm secretes silk to form its protective cocoon.

   Note

   The animal fiber at the root of every other meaning, and a well-traveled word: Old English sioloc or seolc probably came in along the Baltic trade routes. Its cousins include Old Norse silki, Danish and Swedish silke and Russian šolk. As a material it is uncountable, so you say some silk or a strand of silk, and it covers a spider's thread as readily as the silkworm's.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Any silk-like material, such as the threadlike styles of a female corn flower or the fibrous seed covering of certain trees.

   Cooks usually strip every strand of silk from the corn before roasting it.

   The kapok pods split to reveal silk surrounding the seeds.

   Note

   Here the name travels by likeness, to fine, glossy strands that are not silk at all, such as the tassel of an ear of maize or the fluff around bombax seeds. Writers stretch it further: Margery Allingham's The China Governess (1963) describes a woman's black hair as silk. Cooks meet the corn meaning most often, and it is what the kitchen verb strips away.

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The brightly colored garments worn by a jockey to display the colors of the horse's owner.

   Fans recognized the duke's horse by the crimson silks his jockey wore.

   The trainer laid out the silk colors registered to the owner before the meeting.

   Note

   Racing's word for a jockey's jacket and cap, almost always used in the plural. The colors belong to the owner, not the rider, so a jockey changes silks with each owner, and the registered pattern is how spectators tell the horses apart. In the singular it turns attributive, as in silk colors.

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountableplural

   A pair of long fabric sheets suspended from above, on which a performer climbs and performs acrobatic tricks in the air.

   The aerialist wrapped herself in the silks and dropped headfirst toward the stage.

   Years of training go into a polished silk performance high above the crowd.

   Note

   An aerialist's apparatus, and usually plural: performers work on the silks, two long lengths of fabric anchored overhead. They climb the fabric and wrap it around the body, using the wraps for drops, rolls and held poses. The singular appears mainly before another noun, as in a silk performance.

6. 6
   nouncolloquialcountable or uncountable

   A barrister of senior rank, appointed as Queen's Counsel, King's Counsel, or Senior Counsel.

   Only a handful of barristers take silk each year.

   The accused could not afford a silk and relied on a junior barrister instead.

7. 7
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The formal gown worn by a Senior Counsel, that is, a Queen's or King's Counsel.

   The barrister's silk rustled as she rose to address the bench.

   He folded his silk and placed it in the robing-room locker.

   Note

   A courtroom metonymy in two steps: the cloth names the gown, and the gown then names the senior barrister who wears it. Only Senior Counsel wear it. They are Queen's or King's Counsel, and the title changes with the reigning monarch. The garment itself is therefore the visible mark of rank.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To remove the fine, hair-like threads from an ear of corn.

   She shucked and silked the corn at the kitchen sink.

   Volunteers silk hundreds of ears before the county fair cookout.

   Note

   A kitchen and farmyard verb made directly from the threadlike corn silk: to silk an ear is to pull those strands away. It usually travels with shuck, the husking step that comes first. Lynetra T. Griffin's From Whence We Came (2013) has "we shucked and silked the corn." It is regular (silked, silking) and always takes the corn as its object.

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