a. [f. FINE adv. + SPUN ppl. a.]
1. Spun or drawn out to extreme tenuity; delicate in texture, flimsy.
1674. N. Fairfax, A Treatise of the Bulk and Selvedge of the World, Ep. Ded. When men had wrought up all the Woman within them that was feeble and glowing, into a fine-spun thread, they play’d the Men only.
1704. F. Fuller, Med. Gymn. (1718), 20. Where the Solids are so fine-spun, as to determine the very Shape of the Particles of a Fluid.
1798. Sotheby, trans. Wieland’s Oberon (1826), II. 152.
| Fine-spun as if aërial spiders wove | |
| A web to deck, not hide the form of love. |
1856. R. A. Vaughan, Mystics (1860), I. 33. ATHERTON. What interminable lengths of the fine-spun, gay-coloured ribbons of allegory and metaphor has the mountebank ingenuity of that mystical interpretation drawn out of the mouth of Holy Writ!
2. fig. Elaborated to flimsiness, excessively subtle or refined.
1647. Sir R. Fanshawe, trans. Guarini’s Pastor Fido, II. vi. 13.
| That Mistresse in the art of making | |
| The fine-spun lyes, that sels so deer | |
| False words, false hopes, and a false leer? |
1719. W. Wood, Surv. Trade, 161. I am an Enemy to the fine-spun Notions, some Men do, in regard to their Interest only, advance concerning them.
1842. Emerson, Nat., Transcendentalist, Wks. (Bohn), II. 280. The materialist, secure in the certainty of sensation, mocks at fine-spun theories, at star-gazers and dreamers, and believes his life is solid, that he at least takes nothing for granted, but knows where he stands, and what he does.
