wiredrawn

American  

[wahyuhr-drawn] / ˈwaɪərˌdrɔn /

adjective

1. drawn draw out long and thin like a wire.

2. (of ideas, comparisons, etc.) finely spun; extremely intricate; minute.

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Etymology

Origin of wiredrawn

First recorded in 1595–1605; wire + drawn

Example Sentences

Refinement has indeed much to answer for; she has brushed the coat threadbare; she has wiredrawn the thread till it can scarcely support its own weight; and in no one instance has her besetting sin been more conspicuous than in her intercommunings with our church psalmody.

From Project Gutenberg

And the result is, that Messrs Folio and Duodecimo, in order to procure satisfactory orders from the circulating libraries of the multitudinous cities of this deluded empire, issue orders to their helots, Mr Scribblescrawl and Mrs Wiredrawn, requiring them to produce per annum so many sets of three volumes, adapted to the atmosphere wherein they are fated to flourish.

From Project Gutenberg

Here was no pindling fowl that had taken the veil and lived the cloistered life; here was no wiredrawn and trained-down cross-country turkey, but a lusty giant of a bird that would have been a cassowary, probably, or an emu, if he had lived, his bosom a white mountain of lusciousness, his interior a Golconda and not a Golgotha.

From Project Gutenberg

The thought is wiredrawn to inanity, but the words make it perfectly clear that the poet was the only one of the lady’s lovers—to the definite exclusion of all others—whose name justified the quibbling pretence of identity with the ‘will’ which controls her being.

From Project Gutenberg

By which last wiredrawn similitude does Teufelsdröckh mean no more than that young men find obstacles in what we call ‘getting under way’?

From Project Gutenberg