fabric

• fabrick (obsolete)

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.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfæb.ɹɪk/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

fabric (countable and uncountable, plural fabrics)

1. (now rare) An edifice or building.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →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^[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 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.
   • 1982 December 25, Peg Byron, “The 1982 New York Gay Film Festival”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 23, page 12:

     I thought the best match of sympathy with reality was in Fritz Matthies' Pauline's Birthday or the Beast of Notre Dame. It was a surprise, not just because of its ending, but because there was a real fabric in the characters' relationships. In this, it outweighs The Deputy and all its high drama.

   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.

• See also Thesaurus:fabric

• → Irish: fabraic

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.

• Appendix:Fabrics

• IPA^(key): [ˈfabrik]

fabric

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