Definition of "skein"

Brau'd in mine owne houſe with a skeine of thred: / Away thou Ragge, thou quantitie, thou remnant,

c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene iii], page 224

No? why art thou then exaſperate, thou idle, / immateriall skiene of Sleyd ſilke; […]

c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act V, scene i], column 1

“How horribly unjust of you!” cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back and looking up at the little clouds that, like ravelled skeins of glossy white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer sky.

1891, Oscar Wilde, chapter 1, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London, New York, N.Y., Melbourne, Vic.: Ward Lock & Co.

The embroidery, which was a matter for thought, the design being difficult and the colours wanting consideration, brought lapses into the dialogue when she seemed to be engrossed in her skeins of silk, or, with head a little drawn back and eyes narrowed, considered the effect of the whole.

1915, Virginia Woolf, chapter XV, in The Voyage Out, London: The Hogarth Press, published 1949

You hold the skein: wind, Thomas, wind / The thread of eternal life and death.

1935, T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, Part I

He watched her pretty and unconscious munching through the skeins of smoke that pervaded the tent […]

1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […]

But when she turned her thoughts to Morningside Park she perceived the tangled skein of life was now to be further complicated by his romantic importunity.

1909, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 13, in Ann Veronica, London: T. Fisher Unwin, page 289

The practical application of what I have said is very close to the problem which I am investigating. It is a tangled skein, you understand, and I am looking for a loose end.

1923, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Creeping Man

But then, science is a complex skein, intricately interknotted across the artificial boundaries we draw only that we may the more easily encompass its parts in our mind. Pick up any thread of that skein and the whole structure will follow.

1964, Issac Asimov, Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology

Then, beginning in 1959, the skein of convention began to unravel.

2005, Tony Judt, “The Social Democratic Moment”, in Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945, London: Vintage Books, published 2010

Ted began to walk, still dazed, until he found himself among a skein of backstreets so narrow they felt dark.

2010, Jennifer Egan, “Goodbye, My Love”, in A Visit from the Goon Squad

It was the latest in a skein of legal maneuvers by the prince’s lawyers to defuse Ms. Giuffre’s case.

2022 January 4, Mark Landler, “Prince Andrew’s Uncertain Legal Fate Casts Shadow on Britain’s Royals”, in The New York Times‎

One of the free-state settlers went to the blacksmith's shop unarmed, carrying a waggon skein to be repaired.

1862, T. Hughes, History of the US

High above the swallows and 2 miles or so out into the Channel was a skein of geese, probably brent geese on the first day of their emigration from the estuaries of the Channel coast towards the high Arctic tundra of Spitsbergen or Russia.

2018, Laurence Rose, The Long Spring, Bloomsbury, page 111

All three tele skeins are pitching furiously to snag the super Easter Day tele show to be bankrolled by Frigidaire, […]

1950, Billboard, volume 62, number 9

Three comedy shows from the U. S. are in the CTV lineup: CBSTV's Phil Silvers and Danny Thomas skeins and NBC-TV's "Harry's Girls."

1963, Radio Television Daily, volume 93, page 5