Skein vs Stein - What's the difference?
skein | stein |
A quantity of yarn, thread, or the like, put up together, after it is taken from the reel. A skein of cotton yarn is formed by eighty turns of the thread round a fifty-four inch reel.
(figuratively) A web, a weave, a tangle.
* 1923 , Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Creeping Man :
(wagonmaking) A metallic strengthening band or thimble on the wooden arm of an axle.
(zoology, provincial England) A group of wild fowl, (e.g. geese, goslings) when they are in flight.
(sports) A winning streak.
To wind or weave into a skein
English collective nouns
English words not following the I before E except after C rule
----
A beer mug, usually made of ceramic.
*
*:So this was my future home, I thought! Certainly it made a brave picture. I had seen similar ones fired-in on many a Heidelberg stein . Backed by towering hills,a sky of palest Gobelin flecked with fat, fleecy little clouds, it in truth looked a dear little city; the city of one's dreams.
*1974 , (Thomas Pynchon), (w, Gravity's Rainbow)
*:A gnome-size German civilian with a red von Hindenburg mustache is dispensing steins of what looks to be mostly head.
As a noun skein
is a quantity of yarn, thread, or the like, put up together, after it is taken from the reel a skein of cotton yarn is formed by eighty turns of the thread round a fifty-four inch reel.As a verb skein
is to wind or weave into a skein.As a proper noun stein is
from a (etyl) diminutive of stephen.skein
English
(Webster 1913)Alternative forms
* (obsolete) skeanNoun
(en noun)- 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.
- (Knight)