• n. From the Old French "escaigne" and the medieval Latin "scagna". From the Middle English "skeyne" "skein" "skayn" and "skaine" among others. Applied to silk, a quantity of silk yarn or thread wound round and round a winding device of some kind, as a reel. Tha silk yarn that forms the skein could be removed for storage, and later it could be stretched again and wound off for use it.

• Filature (technique)

• Silk bombyx mori
• Spool (technique)
• Warping mill (object)

• Burnham, Dorothy. Warp and Weft. A Textile Terminology. Royal Ontario Museum, 1980; Simpson, John; Weiner, Edmund (eds); The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford : Clarendon Press ; Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1989. [www.oed.com]

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