Definition of "worsted"
worsted1
noun
countable and uncountable, plural worsteds
(textiles) Yarn made from long strands of wool.
Quotations
"Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own wishes, and seldom imagine how much those wishes cost others," said Mrs Garth. She did not mean to go beyond this salutary general doctrine, and threw her indignation into a needless unwinding of her worsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand air.
1871–1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter LVII, in Middlemarch […], volume III, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, book VI, page 266
Finally he took a ball of worsted and tied strings of it across the back passage and across the opposite door.
1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019
The fine, smooth fabric made from such wool yarn.
Quotations
[...] the undertaker’s wife opened a side door, and pushed Oliver down a steep flight of stairs into a stone cell, damp and dark: forming the ante-room to the coal-cellar, and denominated ‘kitchen’; wherein sat a slatternly girl, in shoes down at heel, and blue worsted stockings very much out of repair.
1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], chapter 4, in Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Richard Bentley, […]
He had tied a bit of white worsted round his neck -- Why? Where did he get it? Was it a badge -- an ornament -- a charm -- a propitiatory act? Was there any idea at all connected with it?
1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], part I