tapestry

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A heavy cloth woven with rich, often varicolored designs or scenes, usually hung on walls for decoration and sometimes used to cover furniture.
2. n. Something felt to resemble a richly and complexly designed cloth: the tapestry of world history.
3. v. To hang or decorate with tapestry.
4. v. To make, weave, or depict in a tapestry.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A fabric resembling textile fabrics in that it consists of a warp upon which colored threads of wool, silk, gold, or silver are fixed to produce a pattern, but differing from it in the fact that these threads are not thrown with the shuttle, but are put in one by one with a needle. Pieces of tapestry have generally been employed for covering the walls of apartments, for which purpose they were used in the later middle ages and down to the seventeenth century, and afterward for covering furniture, as the seats and backs of sofas and arm-chairs. See cut under screen.
2. n. Tapestry now made in the city of Aubusson for wall-hangings and curtains. The greater part of the modern tapestry offered for sale in Paris is attributed to this make. Some of it is of great beauty; but in general old designs are copied, or modified to suit the size of rooms for which the hangings are ordered.
3. n. By abuse of the name, a printed worsted cloth for covering chairs, sofas, etc., in imitation of tapestry. See gobelin.
4. To adorn with tapestry.
5. To adorn with hangings or with any pendent covering.

Wiktionary

1. n. A heavy woven cloth, often with decorative pictorial designs, normally hung on walls.
2. n. by extension Anything with variegated or complex details.
3. v. To decorate with tapestry, or as if with a tapestry.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A fabric, usually of worsted, worked upon a warp of linen or other thread by hand, the designs being usually more or less pictorial and the stuff employed for wall hangings and the like. The term is also applied to different kinds of embroidery.
2. v. To adorn with tapestry, or as with tapestry.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a heavy textile with a woven design; used for curtains and upholstery
2. n. a wall hanging of heavy handwoven fabric with pictorial designs
3. n. something that resembles a tapestry in its complex pictorial designs