silk

Meanings

Noun

• A fine fiber excreted by the silkworm or other arthropod (such as a spider).
• A fine, soft cloth woven from silk fibers.
• Anything which resembles silk, such as the filiform styles of the female flower of maize, or the seed covering of bombaxes.
• The gown worn by a Senior (i.e. Queen's/King's) Counsel.
• A Queen's Counsel, King's Counsel or Senior Counsel.
• A pair of long silk sheets suspended in the air on which a performer performs tricks.
• The garments worn by a jockey displaying the colors of the horse's owner.

Verb

• To remove the silk from (corn).

Origin

• From Middle English silk, sylk, selk, selc, from Old English sioloc, seoloc, seolc. The immediate source is uncertain; it probably reached English via the Baltic trade routes (cognates in Old Norse silki (> Danish silke, Swedish silke ("silk")), Russian шёлк, obsolete Lithuanian zilkaĩ), all ultimately from Late Latin sēricus, from Ancient Greek σηρικός, ultimately from an Oriental language (represented now by e.g. Chinese 絲 ("silk")). Compare Seres. seric.