fillet

English

Etymology

From Middle French filet, ultimately from Latin fīlum (“thread”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: fĭ'lĭt, IPA: /ˈfɪlɪt/, X-SAMPA: /"fIlIt/
• (US) (meat senses) IPA: /fɪlˈeɪ/
• Rhymes: -ɪlɪt

Noun

fillet (plural fillets)

1. (now rare) A headband; a ribbon or other band used to tie the hair up, or keep a headdress in place, or for decoration.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I.iii:

     In secret shadow, farre from all mens sight: / From her faire head her fillet she vndight, / And laid her stole aside.

   • 1970, John Glassco, Memoirs of Montparnasse, Mew York 2007, p. 42:

     She was talking of Raymond Duncan, a walking absurdity who dressed in an ancient handwoven Greek costume and wore his hair in long braids reaching to his waist, adding, on ceremonial occasions, a fillet of bay-leaves.

2. A thin strip of any material, in various technical uses.
3. (construction) A heavy bead of waterproofing compound or sealant material generally installed at the point where vertical and horizontal surfaces meet.
4. (engineering, drafting, CAD) A rounded relief or cut at an edge, especially an inside edge, added for a finished appearance and to break sharp edges.
5. A strip or compact piece of meat or fish from which any bones and skin and feathers have been removed.
6. (architecture) A thin flat moulding/molding used as separation between larger mouldings.

Antonyms

• (rounded outside edge): round

Translations

strip of deboned meat or fish

• Czech: filé (cs) n
• Finnish: filee
• French: filet m

• German: Filet n
• Icelandic: lundir f pl (e.g. of beef), flak n (of fish)
• Spanish: filete m

mo(u)lding

• Irish: líosta (ga) m

rounded relief or cut

Derived terms

• chicken fillet

External links

• Fillet in the 1921 edition of Collier's Encyclopedia.

Verb

fillet (third-person singular simple present fillets, present participle filleting, simple past and past participle filleted)

1. (transitive) To slice, bone or make into fillets.
2. (transitive) To apply, create, or specify a rounded or filled corner to.

Synonyms

• (make into fillets): bone, debone

Translations

to make into fillets

• Bulgarian: нарязвам на филета (bg) (narjazvam na fileta)
• Finnish: fileerata (fi)

• French: désosser (fr)
• Italian: disossare (it)

to apply, etc, a rounded or filled corner to

• Finnish: pyöristää (fi)