Also 5–7 bissus. [a. L. byssus, a. Gr. βίσσος ‘a fine yellowish flax, and the linen made from it, but in later writers taken for cotton, also silk, which was supposed to be a kind of cotton’ (Liddell & Scott), ad. Heb. būts, applied to ‘the finest and most precious stuffs, as worn by kings, priests, and persons of high rank or honour’ (Gesenius), transl. in Bible of 1611 ‘fine linen,’ f. root būts, Arab. to be white, to surpass in whiteness. Originally therefore a fiber or fabric distinguished for its whiteness.]
1. An exceedingly fine and valuable textile fiber and fabric known to the ancients; apparently the word was used, or misused, of various substances, linen, cotton, and silk, but it denoted properly (as shown by recent microscopic examination of mummy-cloths, which according to Herodotus were made of βύσσος) a kind of flax, and hence is appropriately translated in the English Bible ‘fine linen.’
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVII. xcvii. (1495), 664. Therbe many manere flexe . but the fayrest of al growyth in Egypte: for therof is Bissus made ryght fayre and whyte as snowe.
1605. Camden, Rem. (1637), 194. Bissus was a plante or kinde of silke grasse.
1715. trans. Pancirollus’ Rerum Mem., I. I. v. 13. Byssus was a fine sort of Flax, which grew in Greece.
1828. De Quincey, Toilette Hebr. Lady, Wks. XII. 117. For wool and flax was often substituted the finest byssus or other silky substance.
1866. Felton, Anc. & Mod. Gr., I. vi. 38. Hair-nets made of golden thread or silk or byssus.
† 2. A name formerly given to filamentous fungoid growths of different kinds, which are now more accurately classified. Obs.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., Byssus … a genus of mosses the most imperfect of the whole class of vegetables.
1770. Withering, Brit. Plants (1796), IV. 143. Cryptogamia. Algæ. Byssus, substance like fine down or velvet, simple or feathered.
1838. Econ. of Vegetation, 152. The mouse-skin byssus may be seen attached to the roof of the vault in wine cellars.
3. Zool. The tuft of fine silky filaments by which mollusks of the genus Pinna and various mussels attach themselves to the surface of rocks; it is secreted by the byssus-gland in the foot.
‘These filaments have been spun, and made into small articles of apparel…. Their color is brilliant, and ranges from a beautiful golden yellow to a rich brown; they also are very durable…. The fabric is so thin that a pair of stockings may be put in an ordinary-sized snuff-box’ (Beck, Draper’s Dict., 39).
1836. Todd, Cycl. Anat., I. 702. The byssus is a bundle of horny or silky filaments.
1838. New Monthly Mag., LIII. 546. They … moor themselves to rocks and stones by the tiny cables of their byssus.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., IV. 199. Mussels are used at Bideford to fix, by means of their byssus, the stones of a bridge, which is difficult to keep in repair, owing to the rapidity of the tide.
4. Bot. ‘The thread-like stipe of some fungi.’ Syd. Soc. Lex., 1881.
1866. Treas. Bot., s.v.
† 5. A name formerly given to ASBESTOS.
1864. Webster cites Nicholson.
