fabric definition

English fabric definition

Alternative forms

• fabrick (obsolete)

Etymology

Borrowed from French fabrique, from Latin fabrica (“a workshop, art, trade, product of art, structure, fabric”), from faber (“artisan, workman”). Doublet of forge, borrowed from Old French.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfæb.ɹɪk/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Noun

fabric (countable and uncountable, plural fabrics)

1. (now rare) An edifice or building.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […], OCLC 228722708; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554:

     Anon out of the earth a fabric huge / Rose like an exhalation.

   • 1791, {w, (Please provide the book title or journal name):

     |title=The Romance of the Forest|publisher=Oxford 1999|p=86|text=They withdrew from the gate, as if to depart, but he presently thought he heard them amongst the trees on the other side of the fabric, and soon became convinced that they had not left the abbey.}}
2. (archaic) The act of constructing, construction, fabrication.
   • 1855, Henry Hart Milman, History of Latin Christianity^[1]:

     Tithe was received by the bishop […] for the fabric of the churches for the poor.

3. (archaic) The structure of anything, the manner in which the parts of a thing are united; workmanship, texture, make.

   cloth of a beautiful fabric

4. The framework underlying a structure.

   the fabric of our lives

   the fabric of the universe

5. A material made of fibers, a textile or cloth.

   cotton fabric

6. The texture of a cloth.
7. (petrology) The appearance of crystalline grains in a rock.
8. (computing) Interconnected nodes that look like a textile fabric when diagrammed.

   The Internet is a fabric of computers connected by routers.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:fabric

Descendants

• → Irish: fabraic

Translations

See also

• Appendix:Fabrics

Romanian fabric definition

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ˈfabrik]

Verb

fabric

1. first-person singular present indicative/subjunctive of fabrica