fabric

English

Alternative forms

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; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
      Anon out of the earth a fabric huge / Rose like an exhalation.
    • 1791, Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest, Oxford 1999, page 86:
      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:
      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 physical material of a building.
    This church dates back to the 11th century, though the great majority of its fabric is fifteenth century or later.
  5. (figurative) The framework underlying a structure.
    the fabric of our lives
    the fabric of the universe
  6. A material made of fibers, a textile or cloth.
    cotton fabric
  7. The texture of a cloth.
  8. (petrology) The appearance of crystalline grains in a rock.
  9. (computing) Interconnected nodes that look like a textile fabric when diagrammed.
    The Internet is a fabric of computers connected by routers.

Synonyms

Derived terms

Descendants
  • → Irish: fabraic

Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Verb

fabric (third-person singular simple present fabrics, present participle fabricking, simple past and past participle fabricked)

  1. (transitive) To cover with fabric.
    • 2016, Mindy Weiss, Lisbeth Levine, The Wedding Book:
      Fabricking and Carpeting a Room. If your ballroom's walls are in need of a paint job, or the space feels cavernous, or your tent is just looking too bare, you can have the ceiling and walls draped with fabric to create an intimate enclave.

See also
  • Appendix:Fabrics

Romanian

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): [ˈfabrik]

Verb

fabric

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