ppl. a. [pa. pple. of WIRE-DRAW v.]
1. Drawn out to a great length or with subtle ingenuity; fine-spun; elaborately subtle, ingenious or refined.
1603. Florio, Montaigne, I. xxvii. 96. A subject, common, bare-worne, and wyer-drawne [orig. tracassé] in a thousand bookes.
1610. B. Jonson, Alch., III. ii. To … shorten so your eares, against the hearing Of the next wire-drawne grace.
1642. D. Rogers, Naaman, 138. The … more subtill and wire-drawne selfe hath beene in deceiving the soule, the more the soule may abhorre her.
1662. Hibbert, Syntagma Theol., I. 196. There is no more certain signe of a bad cause than extended testimonies and wire-drawn arguments.
1715. Felton, On the Classics, 163. What they call Improvement, is generally … spinning out their Author’s Sense, till ’tis wiredrawn, that is, weak and slender.
1732. Berkeley, Alciphr., V. § 24. The … wire-drawn distinctions … of the Schoolmen.
1817. Dibdin, Bibliogr. Decam., I. 380. A very long note might grow out of this observation, but there is no necessity to be outrageously wire-drawn upon it.
1851. Carlyle, Sterling, III. v. Courtly delicate manners, verging towards the wiredrawn and elaborate.
1873. Helps, Anim. & Mast., iv. 110. What a relief it is to come from the wiredrawn nonsense of Seneca, Thomas Aquinas, and Descartes, to the broad common sense of this thoughtful Scotchman [sc. Hume].
2. Of steam, water: see WIRE-DRAW v. 2 b.
1744. Desaguliers, Course Exper. Philos., II. 522. Unless this wire-drawn water goes faster than at the Rate of four Feet in a Second, the Motion is not too swift.
1875. Knight, Dict. Mech., Wire-drawn..., the condition of steam when the pipes or ports leading to the cylinder have not sufficient carrying capacity.
1885. C. G. W. Lock, Workshop Rec., Ser. IV. 101/2. When the suction- or delivery-pipe is too small,… the water is then called ‘wire-drawn.’
3. Of a metal: Drawn into wire. rare.
1826. Adamson, Rail-Roads, 7. The under part will approach nearer to the condition of wire-drawn iron.
4. nonce-uses. Attenuated; ‘weak’; ‘thin.’
1856. Delamer, Fl. Gard. (1861), 12. A difficulty in town gardens is to keep things from being wire-drawn.
1876. Hardy, Ethelberta, xiii. ‘I—am glad to see you!’ Christopher stammered, with a wire-drawn, radically different smile from the one he had intended.
1897. Crockett, Lads’ Love, iii. The keen, thin, wire-drawn voice of Peter Chrystie.
