Log in or Sign up
  1. filigree love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. Delicate and intricate ornamental work made from gold, silver, or other fine twisted wire.
  2. n. An intricate, delicate, or fanciful ornamentation.
  3. n. A design resembling such ornamentation: filigrees of frosting on a cake.
  4. v. To decorate with or as if with filigree.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. 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. It is used either independently or for application to more solid articles, and is one of the most ancient kinds of jewelers' work. The Greek and Etruscan filigree-work is of extreme beauty, and much of the jewelry for personal adornment found in their tombs or elsewhere is of this kind. In the middle ages filigree-work reached great development in certain parts of Europe, especially in Ireland before the eleventh century. It is made in northern Italy, Genoa and Venice being famous for it.
  2. n. Any kind of ornamental openwork resembling or analogous to filigree.
  3. n. 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.
  4. Composed of filigree: as, a filigree brooch.
  5. To ornament with filigree-work.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A delicate and intricate ornamentation made from gold or silver (or sometimes other metal) twisted wire.
  2. n. A design resembling such intricate ornamentation.
  3. v. transitive To decorate something with intricate ornamentation made from gold or silver twisted wire.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. 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.
  2. adj. Relating to, composed of, or resembling, work in filigree. Hence: Fanciful; unsubstantial; merely decorative.

WordNet 3.0

  1. v. make filigree, as with a precious metal
  2. n. delicate and intricate ornamentation (usually in gold or silver or other fine twisted wire)

Etymologies

  1. Alteration of French filigrane, from Italian filigrana : Latin fīlum, thread; see gwhī- in Indo-European roots + Latin grānum, grain; see gr̥ə-no- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

Show 10 more examples...

Log in or sign up to add your own related words.

synonyms (2)

Words with the same meaning

  1. unsubstantial
  1. wirework

hypernyms (2)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. craft
  1. embellishment

same context (24)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. scrollwork
  2. jeweled
  3. rhinestone
  4. opal
  1. moonstone
  2. Givenchy
  3. cut glass
  4. turquoise
  1. sapphire
  2. cinnabar
  3. inlay
  4. network
  1. gold leaf
  2. massy
  3. garnet
  4. mosaic
  1. tracer/y
  2. mesh
  3. vermeil
  4. cameo
  1. ornate
  2. Etruscan
  3. museum-quality
  4. sparkly

reverse dictionary (14)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. fillagree
  2. filigrain
  1. filigree
  2. filigree-work
  1. filigreed
  2. philibeg
  1. betel-box
  2. filegreen
  1. Esfahan
  2. Cuttack
  1. spun glass
  2. appliqué
  1. filigree-glass
  2. wreath

tags (3)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. mouthfeel
  1. cvcvccvv
  1. etc

Log in or sign up to add your own tag.

Wordmap

(beta)

Word visualization

Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘filigree’.

More lists containing ‘filigree’

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • dimã©lion this word has always sounded a bit highbrow to me. but i do like it. Nov 21, 2008

  • knitandpurl "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 Apr 26, 2008

Tweets

Looking for tweets for filigree.

‘filigree’ has been looked up 3015 times, loved by 14 people, added to 79 lists, commented on 2 times, and has a Scrabble score of 12.