Warp and weft
two constituent threads of woven cloth
In the manufacture of cloth, warp and weft are the two basic components in weaving to transform thread and yarn into textile fabrics. The vertical warp yarns are held stationary in tension on a loom (frame) while the horizontal weft (also called the woof) is drawn through (inserted over and under) the warp thread. In the terminology of weaving, each warp thread is called a warp end; a pick is a single weft thread that crosses the warp thread (synonymous terms are fill yarn and filling yarn).
In the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution facilitated the industrialisation of the production of textile fabrics with the picking stick and the flying shuttle, the latter of which was invented by John Kay, in 1733. The mechanised power loom was patented by Edmund Cartwright in 1785, which allowed sixty picks per minute.
Etymology
The word weft derives from the Old English word wefan, to weave. Warp means "that across which the woof is thrown". (Old English wearp, from weorpan, to throw, cf. German werfen, Dutch werpen).
Warp
The warp is the set of yarns or other things stretched in place on a loom before the weft is introduced during the weaving process, and the longitudinal set in a finished fabric with two or more sets of elements.
“Warp and weft” enters the record as two constituent threads of woven cloth. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Warp, weft and constituent can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q116214300. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1733 and 1785.
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This entry incorporates text from “Warp and weft” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.