FLEECE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Fleece

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/flis/ Listen

noun

Fleece n.

1.

The entire coat of wool that covers a sheep or other similar animal; also, the quantity shorn from a sheep, or animal, at one time. "Who shore me Like a tame wether, all my precious fleece."

2.

Any soft woolly covering resembling a fleece.

3.

(Manuf.) The fine web of cotton or wool removed by the doffing knife from the cylinder of a carding machine.

Fleece wool, wool shorn from the sheep.

Golden fleece. See under Golden.

verb

Fleece v. t. (past & past part. fleeced; pres. part. fleecing)

1.

To deprive of a fleece, or natural covering of wool.

2.

To strip of money or other property unjustly, especially by trickery or fraud; to bring to straits by oppressions and exactions. "Whilst pope and prince shared the wool betwixt them, the people were finely fleeced."

3.

To spread over as with wool. (R.)

See images of 'Fleece'

Etymology of 'Fleece'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Fleece" Quotes from Famous Books

... more than three months after his first election, he meekly set out for his duties at "the mount of the Lord, not Lebanon,{3} but Lincoln." He was white in dress, white in face, but radiant white within. He sat a horse without trappings, but with a roll of fleece and clothes, his day and night gear. Around him pricked his clergy upon their gold-buttoned saddles. They tried various devices to get his bundle away to carry it upon their own cruppers, but neither jest nor earnest ...

— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... was, of all others, the most difficult and dangerous in the world. In the first place, it would be necessary to make a long voyage through unknown seas. There was hardly a hope or a possibility that any young man who should undertake this voyage would either succeed in obtaining the Golden Fleece or would survive to return home and tell of the perils he had run. The eyes of King Pelias sparkled with joy, therefore, when he ...

— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... for them in two years, and take them from her hands through the grating of her terrible prison. She spent the last quarter of an hour in tears, and mine were only restrained lest I should add to her grief. I cut off a piece of her fleece and a lock of her beautiful hair, promising her always to bear them next ...

— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... many a time thou wilt break into stablished homes, and by night leave many a man bare, silently pilling through his house, such is thy speech to-day! And many herdsmen of the steadings wilt thou vex in the mountain glens, when in lust for flesh thou comest on the herds and sheep thick of fleece. Nay come, lest thou sleep the last and longest slumber, come forth from thy cradle, thou companion of black night! For surely this honour hereafter thou shalt have among the Immortals, to be called for ever the captain ...

— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... creek creep cheer deer deed deep feed feel feet fleece green heel heed indeed keep keel keen kneel meek need needle peel peep queer screen seed seen sheet sheep sleep sleeve sneeze squeeze street speech steeple steet sweep ...

— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com