• Tapestry

    Pronunciation

    • IPA: /ˈtæpÉ™stɹi/

    Full definition of tapestry

    Noun

    tapestry

    (plural tapestries)
    1. A heavy woven cloth, often with decorative pictorial designs, normally hung on walls.
      • 1963, Margery Allingham, The China Governess Chapter 3, Sepia Delft tiles surrounded the fireplace, their crudely drawn Biblical scenes in faded cyclamen blending with the pinkish pine, while above them, instead of a mantelshelf, there was an archway high enough to form a balcony with slender balusters and a tapestry-hung wall behind.
    2. (by extension)  Anything with variegated or complex details.
      • 2013, Nancy Langston, The Fraught History of a Watery World, European adventurers found themselves within a watery world, a tapestry of streams, channels, wetlands, lakes and lush riparian meadows enriched by floodwaters from the Mississippi River.

    Verb

    1. (transitive, intransitive) To decorate with tapestry, or as if with a tapestry.
      • 1833, Adolphus Slade, Records of Travels in Turkey, Greece, &c., We had run above twenty miles when the sun set, carpeting the sea, and tapestrying the sky with a rare unison of delicate green and golden hues ...
      • 1854, September 13, w, English Note-Books, The banqueting-hall, all open to the sky, and with thick curtains of ivy tapestrying the walls, and grass and weeds growing on the arches that overpass it, is indescribably beautiful.
      • 1921, Israel Zangwill, The Cockpit: Romantic Drama in Three Acts, I present Bosnavina to its Duchess, I kiss the hem of her Majesty's robe and will tapestry her Palace with conquered flags.
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