ˈwire-ˌdrawing, vbl. n.
[f. wire-drawer: see -ing1.]
1. The action or operation of making wire by drawing a piece of ductile metal through a series of holes, successively decreasing in diameter, in a steel plate called a draw-plate. Also attrib.
| 1712 Arbuthnot John Bull iii. viii. 33 Such Fellows are like your Wire-drawing Mills; if they get hold of a Man's Finger, they will pull in his whole Body at last. 1797 W. Johnston tr. Beckmann's Invent. II. 232 The invention of the drawing-iron or proper wire-drawing. 1840 Lardner Geom. xv. 177 The process of wire-drawing..in which a cylindrical form..is required to be imparted to the metal of which the wire is made. 1876 Rock Text. Fabr. 22 The first use of a wire-drawing machine seems to have been about the year 1360, at Nuremberg. |
2. transf. (See quots. and wire-draw v. 2 b.)
| 1660 D'Acres Water-Drawing 35 The forceing & crowding of the water contrary to its own natural porousnesse, and as I may properly term it (as it were) a wyer-drawing of the water. 1875 R. F. Martin Havrez' Winding Mach. 90 Wire-drawing of the steam from passing through a contracted orifice. 1887 Encycl. Brit. XXII. 487/1 Wire⁓drawing of steam is..a case of imperfectly-resisted expansion. |
3. fig. (see wire-draw v. 3).
| 1640 Digby in Lismore Papers Ser. ii. (1888) IV. 139, I am sorry to see thinges gotten by wyre drauing, which one may be sure before hand must be granted. 1648 C. Walker Hist. Independ. i. 54 At length after much wyer-drawing of the businesse, one Warrant was shewn to Master Baynton. 1732 Berkeley Alciphr. vii. §12 What Footsteps are there in the Holy Scripture to make us think, that the wiredrawing of abstract Ideas was a Task injoined either Jews or Christians? 1831 Carlyle Sart. Res. iii. x, We have often blamed him for a habit of wire-drawing and over-refining. 1877 Conder Basis Faith ii. 68 To refine this discussion into the wire-drawing of verbal controversy. |
So ˈwire-ˌdrawing ppl. a. in fig. senses.
| 1741 Richardson Pamela IV. vi. 37, I know the pretty wire-drawing ways of your Sex. 1756 Burke Vind. Nat. Soc. Wks. 1906 I. 12 The history..does not afford matter enough to fill ten pages, though it should be spun out by the wire-drawing amplification of a Guicciardini himself. 1831 Carlyle Sart. Res. i. vi, An idle wire-drawing spirit..is too clearly discernible. |