sley

From Middle English slay, from Old English slege.

• IPA^(key): /sleɪ/

sley (plural sleys)

1. Reed (of a loom).
2. A guideway in a knitting machine.
3. (weaving) The number of warp ends per inch in the cloth.

   Synonym: (sometimes) sett

   • 1903 December, “The Adjustment of Cotton Preparing and Spinning Machinery”, in Textile World, volume 26, number 3, page 125:

     An extreme draft is not desirable in the spinning of filling yarns either on a frame or mule, although yarn from the latter machines is usually spun from coarser roving than would be possible on a filling frame, and it would seem preferable to spin same from roving with a medium draft, or, from double roving, and particularly so for fine sheetings, cambrics and other styles of cloth, that require finer filling than the warp and which have a higher count or pick, than sley.

sley (third-person singular simple present sleys, present participle sleying, simple past and past participle sleyed)

1. (transitive, weaving) To separate or part the threads of, and arrange them in a reed.

• slay

• sleave
• sleid

• “sley”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• Edward H[enry] Knight (1877) “Sley”, in Knight’s American Mechanical Dictionary. […], volumes III (REA–ZYM), New York, N.Y.: Hurd and Houghton […], →OCLC.
• Phyllis G. Tortora, Ingrid Johnson (2013) The Fairchild Books Dictionary of Textiles, 8th edition, Bloomsbury Academic

• Slye, leys, lyes, lyse, sely, syle

sley

1. Alternative form of sly