tissue

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A fine, very thin fabric, such as gauze.
2. n. Tissue paper.
3. n. A soft, absorbent piece of paper used as toilet paper, a handkerchief, or a towel.
4. n. An interwoven or interrelated number of things; a web; a network: "The text is a tissue of mocking echoes” ( Richard M. Kain).
5. n. Biology An aggregation of morphologically similar cells and associated intercellular matter acting together to perform one or more specific functions in the body. There are four basic types of tissue: muscle, nerve, epidermal, and connective.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Figuratively, to weave; construct; elaborate.
2. n. A woven or textile fabric; specifically, in former times, a fine stuff, richly colored or ornamented, and often shot with gold or silver threads, a variety of cloth of gold; now, any light gauzy texture, such as is used for veils, or, more indefinitely, any woven fabric of fine quality: a generic word, the specific sense of which in any use is determinable only by its connection or qualification.
3. n. A ribbon, or a woven ligament of some kind.
4. n. In biology, an aggregate of similar cells and cell-products in a definite fabric; a histological texture of any metazoic animal: as, muscular, nervous, cellular, fibrous, connective, or epithelial tissue; parenchymatous tissue. All parts of such organisms are composed of tissues, and the tissues themselves consist either of cells or of cell-products, of which delicate fibers are the most frequent form. Any tissue is an organ, but tissue specially notes the substance of any organ, or the mode of coherence of its ultimate formative constituents, rather than its formation in gross, and requires a qualifying word for its specification.
5. n. Specifically, in botany, the cellular fabric out of which plant-structures are built up, being composed of united cells that have had a common origin and have obeyed a common law of growth. The tissue-elements are the cells in their various modifications, and, although seemingly diverse as to form, size, and function, may be reduced to two principal types: namely, parenchyma in its widest sense, including parenchyma proper, collenchyma, sclerotic parenchyma, epidermal cells, suberous parenchyma, etc., and prosenchyma in its widest sense, including prosenchyma proper, typical wood cells, tracheids, ducts, bast-cells, sieve-cells, etc. See parenchyma and prosenchyma.
6. n. Figuratively, an interwoven or interconnected series or sequence; an intimate conjunction, coördination, or concatenation.
7. n. Same as tissue-paper. See paper.
8. n. In photography, a film or very thin plate of gelatin compounded with a pigment, made on a continuous strip of paper, and used, after bichromate sensitization, for carbon-printing.
9. n. In entomology, the geometrid moth Scotosia dubitata : an English collectors' name.
10. n. In zoology, areolar tissue. See def. 3.
11. n. In zoology, areolar tissue.
12. Made of tissue.
13. To weave with threads of silver or gold, as in the manufacture of tissue.
14. To clothe in or adorn with tissue.

Wiktionary

1. n. Thin, woven, gauze-like fabric.
2. n. A sheet of absorbent paper, especially one that is made to be used as tissue paper, toilet paper or a handkerchief.
3. n. Absorbent paper as material.
4. n. biology A group of similar cells that function together to do a specific job
5. v. To form tissue of; to interweave.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A woven fabric.
2. n. A fine transparent silk stuff, used for veils, etc.; specifically, cloth interwoven with gold or silver threads, or embossed with figures.
3. n. (Biol.) One of the elementary materials or fibres, having a uniform structure and a specialized function, of which ordinary animals and plants are composed; a texture.
4. n. Fig.: Web; texture; complicated fabrication; connected series.
5. v. To form tissue of; to interweave.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a soft thin (usually translucent) paper
2. v. create a piece of cloth by interlacing strands of fabric, such as wool or cotton
3. n. part of an organism consisting of an aggregate of cells having a similar structure and function