Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A fine, very thin fabric, such as gauze.
  • noun Tissue paper.
  • noun A soft, absorbent piece of paper used as toilet paper, a handkerchief, or a towel.
  • noun An interwoven or interrelated number of things; a web; a network.
  • noun Biology An aggregation of morphologically similar cells and associated intercellular matter acting together to perform one or more specific functions in an organism. There are four basic types of tissue in many animals: muscle, nerve, epidermal, and connective.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Figuratively, to weave; construct; elaborate.
  • noun 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.
  • noun A ribbon, or a woven ligament of some kind.
  • noun 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.
  • noun 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.
  • noun Figuratively, an interwoven or interconnected series or sequence; an intimate conjunction, coördination, or concatenation.
  • noun Same as tissue-paper. See paper.
  • noun 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.
  • noun In entomology, the geometrid moth Scotosia dubitata : an English collectors' name.
  • noun In zoology, areolar tissue. See def. 3.
  • noun In zoology, areolar tissue.
  • Made of tissue.
  • To weave with threads of silver or gold, as in the manufacture of tissue.
  • To clothe in or adorn with tissue.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To form tissue of; to interweave.
  • noun A woven fabric.
  • noun A fine transparent silk stuff, used for veils, etc.; specifically, cloth interwoven with gold or silver threads, or embossed with figures.
  • noun (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.
  • noun Fig.: Web; texture; complicated fabrication; connected series.
  • noun very thin, gauzelike paper, used for protecting engravings in books, for wrapping up delicate articles, etc.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a soft thin (usually translucent) paper
  • verb create a piece of cloth by interlacing strands of fabric, such as wool or cotton
  • noun part of an organism consisting of an aggregate of cells having a similar structure and function

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English tissu, a rich kind of cloth, from Old French, from past participle of tistre, to weave, from Latin texere; see teks- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French tissu, past participle of tistre, from Latin texere.

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