a. Also 7–9 fusil. [ad. L. fūsil-is, f. fūs- ppl. stem of fundĕre to pour: see FOUND v.3, FUSE v.2 and -ILE.]
1. Capable of being melted. Now rare.
1605. Timme, Quersit., II. i. 105. Metall is nothing else but a certaine fusil Salt.
1660. R. Coke, Power & Subj., 162. We teach, that every Cup in which the Eucharist is consecrated be Fusil, and that it be never consecrated in wood.
1758. Reid, trans. Macquer’s Chym., I. 358. Mix with this powder … one part of fusile glass.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), III. 641, Timaeus. Water, again, admits in the first place of a division into two kinds; the one liquid and the other fusile.
2. Running or flowing by the force of heat; made liquid by heat. Now rare.
a. 1631. Donne, in Select. (1840), 220. Metal may be soft, and yet not fusile.
1639. Fuller, Holy War, II. xii. (1647), 59. The glassie sand … could not be made fusile till it was brought hither.
1708. J. Philips, Cyder, II. 70.
| Turns into a fusil Sea | |
| That in his Furnace bubbles sunny-red. |
1725. Pope, Odyss., VI. 278. And o’er the silver pours the fusil gold.
fig. 1839. Blackw. Mag., XLV. 461. The fusile capacity of a language for running into ready coalitions of polysyllables aids this tendency.
3. Formed by melting or casting.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVI. xxxvi. (1495), 564. Bras that is wroughte wyth hamour is callid Regular, and bras that oonly is meltyd hyghte Fusile.
1667. Milton, P. L., XI. 573. He formd First, his own Tooles; then, what might else be wrought Fusil or grav’n in mettle.
1796. Morse, Amer. Geog., II. 490. They [the Chinese] understood printing before the Europeans; but that can by only applied to block printing, for the fusile or moveable types were undoubtedly Dutch or German inventions.
1837. Whittock, Bk. Trades (1842), 386. To Peter Schoeffer belonged the honor of inventing fusil types.
fig. 1624. Donne, LXXX Serm., xlvi. (1640), 460. S. Paul was borne a man, an Apostle, not carved out, as the rest, in time; but a fusile Apostle, an Apostle powred out, and cast in a Mold.
