Fur

Fur is a thick growth of hair that covers the skin of almost all mammals. It consists of a combination of oily guard hair on top and thick underfur beneath. The guard hair keeps moisture from reaching the skin; the underfur acts as an insulating blanket that keeps the animal warm.

Fur has long served as a source of clothing for humans. Historically, it was worn for its insulating quality, with aesthetics becoming a factor over time. Pelts were worn in or out, depending on their characteristics and desired use. The term "a fur" may connote a coat, wrap, or shawl.

• And over all, a Counterpane was plac’d,
  Thick sown with Furs of many a Savage Beast,
  Of Bears and Lions, heretofore his Spoil;
  And still remain’d the Trophies of his Toil.
  • Homeric Hymns, 5 ("To Aphrodite"), as translated by William Congreve (1710), of Anchises' bed

• Mounted on panthers’ furs and lions’ manes,
  From rear to van they scour about the plains.
  • John Keats, Endymion (1818), of "Bacchus and his crew"

• Was there any more repellent sight than a silly, self-centred, greedy woman clad in the skin of a beast so much more splendid than herself?
  • Olivia Manning, The Spoilt City (1962), Ch. 27

• ... If we can't be cordial
  to these creatures' fleece,
  I think that we deserve to freeze.
  • Marianne Moore, "The Arctic Ox (or Goat)", O to Be a Dragon (1959), p. 24

• It is really a joy to slip furs around a beautiful, luxurious woman, to see and feel how her neck, her lovely limbs snuggle against the costly soft furs, to lift the stray locks of her hair, and place them outside the collar, and when she takes off her cloak and the cosy warmth and the subtle scent of her body lingers on the tips of the sable, the effect is overpowering.
  • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus im Pelz (1870); translated by H. J. Henning, Venus in Furs (Senate, 1996), p. 115

• ’Twas never merry world since, of two usuries, the merriest was put down, and the worser allowed by order of law a furred gown to keep him warm; and furred with fox on lambskins too, to signify that craft, being richer than innocency, stands for the facing.
  • William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, III, ii, Pompey

• This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,
  The lion and the belly-pinchèd wolf
  Keep their fur dry.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear, III, i, Gentleman

• Tipt with jet,
  Fair ermines, spotless as the snows they press;
  Sables, of glossy black; and dark-embrown’d,
  Or beauteous freakt with many a mingled hue,
  Thousands besides, the costly pride of courts.
  • James Thomson, "Winter", The Seasons (ed. 1791), of the Siberian fur-trade

• Immers’d in furs,
  Doze the gross race.
  • James Thomson, "Winter", The Seasons (ed. 1791), of the Siberians

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Fur