Silk Is a Single Continuous Thread a Kilometre Long
Silk is a fine fibre from the silkworm's cocoon. Each cocoon is one unbroken filament.
Silk is a fine soft fibre produced by the larva of the silk moth. A cocoon is not spun from short fibres but from a single continuous filament, up to about a kilometre in length, which the larva secretes in a figure-of-eight motion over several days. Unwinding it intact is the whole art of reeling, and it is why silk has no join and takes dye so evenly. The word travelled the Silk Road itself, reaching English via Slavic from a Greek name for the Chinese.
- A fine fibre. *Pure silk.*
- Silkworm. *A silkworm.*
- Sericulture — silk farming. *Sericulture.*
- Silky — smooth. *Silky smooth.*
- Old English — *sioloc*. *The source.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | silk | Silk. |
| Adjective | silky | Silky. |
| Adjective | silken | Silken. |
| Compound | silkworm | A silkworm. |
| Greek | Seres | The Chinese. |
- A silk scarf.Fabric.
- One cocoon, one filament.Production.
- Silky smooth.Figurative.
How silk is made
- The larva spins a cocoon from one continuous filament
- Cocoons are heated to stop the moth breaking the thread on emerging
- Reeling unwinds several cocoons together into one yarn
- A single filament is too fine to use alone
- Roughly 2,500 cocoons make a pound of silk
Old English *sioloc*, probably through Slavic from Greek *Seres*, the name for the people of China.
How long is the thread in one cocoon?
Up to about a kilometre, spun as a single continuous filament over several days.
Why are cocoons heated?
To stop the moth emerging, which would break the single filament into unusable short pieces.