The act of writing is often compared to weaving cloth. After all, both crafts involve blending linear elements — lines of words and threads of fabric — to produce useful and beautiful creations.

So we "fabricate" stories, "spin" yarns and "stitch together" plots. As the Canadian poet Robert Bringhurst put it, "The true storyteller is a weaver."

The derivation of the English word "text" reflects this metaphoric association. When ancient Roman scribes noticed a resemblance between the lines of writing they crafted and the threads in cloth, they called the written page a "textus," Latin for "cloth."

The Roman rhetorician Quintillian, a first-century version of a writing coach, urged writers to join words together like threads woven into a "text."

By the Middle Ages, the Medieval Latin "textus" had come to mean "the Scriptures or a text or treatise," and this meaning gave rise to the Old French "texte" (Gospels, book), from which the English word "text" is derived.

We don't call woven cloth a "text" anymore, but the fabric meaning of "text" survives in "textile" and "texture" (the physical or metaphoric "feel" of something).

Three other English words related to language are also derived from cloth-making: "subtle," "heckle" and "tease."

The ancient Romans devised the adjective "subtilis" to describe delicate fabric that was finely woven and gossamer-like. "Subtilis" was a contraction of "subtexilis," a word created from "sub" (which here means not "under" but "smaller, tighter") and "texare" (to weave).

By the time "subtilis" entered English, as "subtle," it denoted not only tightly-woven fabric but also any verbal message that was so intricate or sophisticated that its meaning was elusive or indirect, as in a "subtle argument."

"Heckle" derives from the Middle English "hekelen" (to use a sharp-toothed comb to clean and card flax and hemp). Drawing on this concept of roughing something up, "heckle" came to mean "to harass a speaker or performer with sharp remarks or taunts."

Similarly, the Old English "teaze" meant "to run thorns through wool or flax to separate and shred the fibers," so "tease" later acquired the figurative meaning "to annoy or pester with critical remarks, often in a mischievous or petty way."

We still sometimes use "tease" in its older sense of combing something out, as in "teasing a combover into a forelock." Just teasing, Mr. President!

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to [email protected] or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.