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Floss   Listen
noun
Floss  n.  
1.
(Bot.) The slender styles of the pistillate flowers of maize; also called silk.
2.
Untwisted filaments of silk, used in embroidering.
3.
A body feather of an ostrich. Flosses are soft, and gray from the female and black from the male.
Floss silk, silk that has been twisted, and which retains its loose and downy character. It is much used in embroidery. Called also floxed silk.
Floss thread, a kind of soft flaxen yarn or thread, used for embroidery; called also linen floss, and floss yarn.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Floss" Quotes from Famous Books



... poverty, but not many of us feel with the peasant's fate, as George Sand felt it. She never ceased to care for the cause of social progress, just as she was always heart and soul an artist. George Eliot has written words "to the reader" about the ruined villages on the Rhone. In "The Mill on the Floss," she writes, and again the remarkable difference between the two writers appears as forcibly as in the two prefaces. "These dead tinted, hollow-eyed skeletons of villages on the Rhone, oppress me with the feeling that human life—very much ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne

... written to London signed by Dowie and the models and patterns had been sent to the village and brought to the castle by Jock Macaur. Later there had come rolls of fine flannel and lawn, with gossamer thread and fairy needles and embroidery floss. Then the sewing began. ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... if she had come into her own and was made for it; I never did see her look so pretty, but Peter sweated and acted awful silly. Father had a time with the team. Ned and Jo became excited and just ranted. They simply danced. Laddie had braided their manes and tails, and they waved like silken floss in the sunshine, and the carriage was freshly washed and the patent leather and brass shone, and we rode flower-covered. Ahead, Laddie and the Princess fairly tried themselves. She hadn't put on her hat or habit after all. When ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking off a piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... and was not likely to be home till afternoon tea. Bessie was left in charge of the younger members of the household, and was further deeply engaged in an elaborate piece of ecclesiastical embroidery, all crimson and gold, and peacock floss, which she hoped to finish before ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... Long, who was the eldest son of one of the great up-country Chiefs. He was returning from Singapore with the Raja, to whom he had fled after some escapade of his had excited the paternal wrath. He was a nice-looking youngster, with a slight lisp, and a manner as soft as floss-silk, and he was always smartly dressed in pretty Malay garments. We travelled together for more than three months, and I got to know him pretty well, and took something of a liking to him. I knew, of course, that his manner to his own people ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... monk. "Look here, Minnie," he said gently. "You ain't called on to dance like a broncho, you know. Remember, you're the mother of a family! Cut out having too many dances with that monk. He holds you too tight. I think he's one of the committee men. You floss up to the tallest domino and give him a good time. ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... in the exquisite floss that surrounds the natal chamber and fills out the balloon. This is the waiting-room in which the body hardens. All dive into it as and when they emerge from the central keg. They will not leave it until four months later, when ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... I expect I have dragged off my green floss," exclaimed her aunt, in irritation. "I am ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney

... outward like the boss of a shield; shimmering rosy-gray and crystalline. From the vital ovoids ran a pattern of sparkling threads, irised and brilliant as floss of molten jewels; converging with interfacings of spirals, of volutes and of triangles into ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... I called upon Dr. Mercier in his office in Girod street in the summer of 1883, to appeal to his remembrance of this long-forgotten matter, I found a very noble-looking, fair old gentleman whose abundant waving hair had gone all to a white silken floss with age. He sat at his desk in persistent silence with his strong blue eyes fixed steadfastly upon me while I slowly and carefully recounted the story. Two or three times I paused inquiringly; ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... a little leathern case, containing moss well dried and rubbed between the hands, and also the white floss of the seed of the ground-willow, to serve as tinder. The sparks are struck from two lumps of iron pyrites; and as soon as the tinder has caught, it is gently blown till the fire has spread an inch around, when the pointed end of a piece of oiled wick being applied, it soon bursts into ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... knows, the Agony Column of a daily paper is not actually so domestic as it seems. When "Mother" apparently says to "Floss," "Come home at once. Father gone away for week. Bert and Sid longing to see you," what is really happening is that Barney Hoker is telling Jud Batson to meet him outside the Duke of Westminster's little place at 3 a.m. precisely on Tuesday morning, not forgetting to bring his jemmy and a dark ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne

... light came some degree of resignation. Several days went slowly by, bringing the first of April, which was to be the wedding-day. August Naab had said it would come before the cottonwoods shed their white floss; and their buds had just commenced to open. The day was not a holiday, and George and Zeke and Dave began to pack for the ranges, yet there was an air of jollity and festivity. Snap Naab had a springy step and jaunty mien. Once he regarded ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... of "The Mill on the Floss," the author gives to one chapter the title, "How a Hen Takes to Stratagem." The two cases are not parallel; and yet I always think of this chapter-heading when I recall what followed Amos Judson's ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... one so tall as I having to stand upright and do my duty; but you,—why, you are no taller than one of my green pods that I am filling with floss—" ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann

... moustache, imperial, tress, lock, curl, ringlet; fimbriae, pili, cilia, villi; lovelock; beaucatcher[obs3]; curl paper; goatee; papillote, scalp lock. plumage, plumosity[obs3]; plume, panache, crest; feather, tuft, fringe, toupee. wool, velvet, plush, nap, pile, floss, fur, down; byssus[obs3], moss, bur; fluff. knot (convolution) 248. V. be rough &c. adj.; go against the grain. render-rough &c. adj.; roughen, ruffle, crisp, crumple, corrugate, set on edge, stroke the wrong way, rumple. Adj. rough, uneven, scabrous, scaly,knotted; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... and Maggie Tulliver is taken from the early chapters of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. The book follows the fortunes of Tom and Maggie, whom at the opening of the story we find living with their parents at the old mill house on the Floss River, until they meet their death, in their early manhood and womanhood. We give here, however, only a part of the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... an unnatural girl!" cried Mrs. Floss. "Why shouldn't you take the poor baby with you? Wouldn't he like a sight of the park and the green trees as well as you? If you take the baby with you, I'll give you each another penny, and an extra one for the baby, and you can all have ...
— A Big Temptation • L. T. Meade

... them highly, but was afraid of them—wouldn't go near them for his life—and before I'd been with them a fortnight they all knew me. I was only a wee laddie, but they answered to my call like friendly dogs rather than the great powerful splendid beasts they were, with their rough coats shining like floss silk in the sunset, when I went to drive them home, singing as I came. And my father said to me one night—'Laddie, tell me the truth—are ye ever scared at the bulls!' 'No, father!' said I—'It's a bonnie boy I am to the bulls!' And he laughed—by Jove!—how he laughed! ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... Rob deliberately, "it is mostly tucked away under a modest little cap; but, were it not for that wise restraint, I should say it might be that kind of fluffy, fly-away floss-silk, which puts the finishing touch to a ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... a laboring oar, that toils in the surf of the ocean, Bent, but not broken, by age was the form of the notary public; Shocks of yellow hair, like the silken floss of the maize, hung Over his shoulders; his forehead was high; and glasses with horn bows Sat astride on his nose, with a look of wisdom supernal. Father of twenty children was he, and more than a hundred Children's children rode on his knee, and heard his great watch tick. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... the stream; I crept Where the waters wept - The floss in the foss Gurgling across The bosses of moss, Like a dryad's nipple ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley



Words linked to "Floss" :   thread, flossy, yarn, dental floss



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