English

Noun

hairiness ‎(countable and uncountable, plural hairinesses)

1. The characteristic of being hairy.
   • 1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia, Observ. XXVI,

     We have had (says he) another of this kind brought us out of the East-Indies, which being planted was in shew like the former, but came not to perfection, the unkindly season not suffering it to shew the flower; but of the Cods that were brought, some were smaller, shorter, and rounder then the Garden kind; others much longer, and many growing together, as it were in clusters, and cover'd all over with a brown short hairiness, so fine, that if any of it be rubb'd, or fall on the back of ones hand, or other tender parts of the skin, it will cause a kind of itching […]

   • 1726, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Part IV, Chapter II,

     The fore-feet of the Yahoo differed from my hands in nothing else but the length of the nails, the coarseness and brownness of the palms, and the hairiness on the backs.

   • 1804, William Robert Broughton, A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, Book I, p. 92, footnote,

     Spanberg, the Russian navigator, landed, he says, in a great island from 43° to 50° lat., speaks of the uncommon hairiness of the natives, and of their wearing of silver in their ears.

   • 1942, Emily Carr, The Book of Small, “Singing,”

     Small reddened but said stubbornly, “The cow likes my singing.” ¶ Cows are different from humans; perhaps the hairiness of their ears strains sound.

2. (technical) A characteristic of yarn: the proportion of fibre ends that stick out and are not embedded in the yarn body.
   • 1978, Ahmedabad Textile Industry's Research Association, Proceedings of the Technological Conference, p. 91,

     There was a reduction in hairiness of yarn after warping by about 17% in comparison to the hairiness of the wound yarn.

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