a. [ad. mod.L. fibrōsus: see FIBRE and -OUS. Cf. FIBROSE and Fr. fibreux.]
1. Full of fibres; formed of fibres:
a. in animals. Fibrous tissue: the ordinary connective tissue in the body. Fibrous tumour = FIBROID.
1657. S. Purchas, Pol. Flying-Ins., iii. 7. Their [Bees’] back and breast is a kind of reddish fibrous flesh.
1661. Lovell, Hist. Anim. & Min., Introd. Their lungs are single, fibrous … and fungous.
1800. trans. Lagrange’s Chem., II. 350. Blood … separates into two portions, the coagulum or fibrous part, and the serum.
1872. Huxley, Phys., ii. 23. Outside the muscular coat is a sheath of fibrous or connective tissue.
1885. Creighton, in Encycl. Brit. (ed. 9), XVIII. 369/1. The fibrous tumors may become cystic in their interior.
b. in plants.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 616. There are of Roots, Bulbous Roots, Fibrous Roots, and Hirsute Roots.
1677. Plot, Oxfordsh., 144. Which large Violet from a fibrous root sendeth forth many leaves.
1713. C’tess Winchelsea, Miscellany Poems, 232.
| And shou’d again his Length of Timber rear, | |
| And new engrafted Branches wear | |
| Of fibrous Cordage and impending Shrouds, | |
| Still trimm’d with human Care, and water’d by the Clouds. |
1846. J. Baxter, Libr. Pract. Agric. (ed. 4), I. 279. From its fibrous bark we procure the comfort of linen.
1870. Hooker, Stud. Flora, 300. Cyclamen hederæfolium … tuber fibrous all over, leaves and flowers autumnal.
c. in minerals and metals.
1794. Sullivan, View Nat., I. 452. Fibrous asbestos, alumen plumosum, is mild magnesia, combined with silex, calcareous earth, and a small proportion of argill, and iron.
1805–16. R. Jameson, Char. Min., 232. In the fibrous fracture we have to attend to the thickness … and the position of the fibres.
1813. Bakewell, Introd. Geol. (1815), 217. Thin strata of beautiful white fibrous gypsum occur in marle, at Clifton, on the south side of the Trent, near Nottingham.
1858. Greener, Gunnery, 88–9. To obviate this rapid destruction of cannon, the metal has been changed from the molecular to the fibrous; that is from cast iron to wrought iron.
2. Resembling fibre or fibres; fibre-like.
1707. Curios. in Husb. & Gard., 81. There are fibrous Tubes in Trees, for the Sap to mount.
1813. Shelley, Q. Mab, I. 94.
| The Fairy’s frame was slight, yon fibrous cloud, | |
| That catches but the palest tinge of even, | |
| And which the straining eye can hardly seize | |
| When melting into eastern twilight’s shadow, | |
| Were scarce so thin, so slight. |
3. Comb., as fibrous-rooted adj.
1796. C. Marshall, Garden., xx. (1813), 399. Take up, remove offsets, and divide fibrous rooted perennial flowers about the middle of the month.
1845. Lindley, Sch. Bot., viii. (1858), 134. Amaryllidaceæ.… Generally bulbous, sometimes fibrous-rooted.
Hence Fibrously adv., in a fibrous manner; like fibres; and Fibrousness, the state or quality of being fibrous.
1727. Bailey, vol. II, Fibrousness, fulness of fibres.
1828. Westm. Rev., IX. Jan., 174. Fibrousness is its essential character.
1833. J. Holland, Manuf. Metal, II. 342. The fibrousness produced by this operation is again removed.
1854. Jones & Siev., Pathol. Anat., ii. 33. They never show any organized arrangement beyond a low grade of fibrousness.
1881. J. S., in Art Jrnl., 102/1. The two faded leaves drawn so very fibrously.
1891. C. E. Craddock, In the ‘Stranger People’s’ Country, in Harper’s Mag., LXXXII. Jan., 210/1. The odor of the azaleas in the dense undergrowth and the balsamic breath of the low-hanging firs wafting to him, all fibrously a-glitter wherever the moon touched the dew in the dense midst of their shadows.
