Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Delicate and intricate ornamental work made from gold, silver, or other fine twisted wire.
- noun An intricate, delicate, or fanciful ornamentation.
- noun A design resembling such ornamentation.
- transitive verb To decorate with or as if with filigree.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To ornament with filigree-work.
- noun Ornamental work consisting of fine gold, silver, or sometimes copper wire, formed into delicate tracery of scrolls, network, and the like, or of minute grains or plates of metal soldered to a background, or of both combined.
- noun Any kind of ornamental openwork resembling or analogous to filigree.
- noun Hence Figuratively, anything very delicate, light, and fanciful or showy in structure; especially, anything too delicately formed to be serviceable; something easily destroyed or injured.
- Composed of filigree: as, a filigree brooch.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Ornamental work, formerly with grains or breads, but now composed of fine wire and used chiefly in decorating gold and silver to which the wire is soldered, being arranged in designs frequently of a delicate and intricate arabesque pattern.
- adjective Relating to, composed of, or resembling, work in filigree. Hence: Fanciful; unsubstantial; merely decorative.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
delicate andintricate ornamentation made fromgold orsilver (or sometimes other metal)twisted wire . - noun A
design resembling such intricate ornamentation. - verb transitive To
decorate something withintricate ornamentation made fromgold orsilver twisted wire .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb make filigree, as with a precious metal
- noun delicate and intricate ornamentation (usually in gold or silver or other fine twisted wire)
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Also decorated with filigree is the familiar introit, In medio ecclesie, in which the initial I is inhabited by ten scenes from the life of John the Evangelist. 136
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008
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There will be a lot of flash and filigree from the new Hook (Step 1 was to create a convenient urban legend to explain the otherwise cliche name).
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The points of light lit up a tin filigree framed mirror, returning a full reflection of the altar.
In amber: a tale of Mexican discovery Beth 2001
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The points of light lit up a tin filigree framed mirror, returning a full reflection of the altar.
In amber: a tale of Mexican discovery Beth 2001
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To support these trends Murano artists and artisans returned to techniques of the past such as filigree, murrino, and lattimo.
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It reminds her of plants; of ferns specifically, so does the word 'filigree'.
2003-06-24 : table-top thinking calimae 2003
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(My yarn is the "filigree" colorway, which is currently out of stock, btw.)
Wendy Knits 2010
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And this is a beautifully written tale, composed of rhyming couplets and incorporating rich vocabulary like "filigree," "regal" and "luminescent."
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One exhibit item was a bull's head covered in filigree crochet reminiscent of what Grandma did and displayed on her table.
Magda Abu-Fadil: "Bezaubern" Zurich on a Short Business Trip Magda Abu-Fadil 2011
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One exhibit item was a bull's head covered in filigree crochet reminiscent of what Grandma did and displayed on her table.
Magda Abu-Fadil: "Bezaubern" Zurich on a Short Business Trip Magda Abu-Fadil 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word filigree
"I had more pleasure on the evenings when a ship, absorbed and liquefied by the horizon, appeared so much the same colour as its background, as in an Impressionist picture, that it seemed also to be of the same substance, as though its hull and the rigging in which it tapered into a slender filigree had simply been cut out from the vaporous blue of the sky."
-- Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D.J. Enright, p 525 of the Modern Library paperback edition
April 26, 2008
dimã©lion commented on the word filigree
this word has always sounded a bit highbrow to me. but i do like it.
November 21, 2008