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fleece

Archaic Terms
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The woolly coat of a sheep, or the wool shorn from a sheep at one shearing; also used as a symbol of wealth or reward.

Detailed Definition
Fleece derives from Old English "fleos" and carries immediate associations with the pastoral economy of wool-producing England. In poetry it functions both practically—describing the texture and warmth of sheep's wool—and symbolically, most powerfully through the myth of the Golden Fleece, which transforms the word into a sign of quest, heroism, and divine favor. Spenser and later poets invoke fleece to root their allegories in the familiar landscape of shepherding while reaching toward classical grandeur. The softness and whiteness of fleece also make it a conventional image of innocence and purity, particularly in religious verse where the lamb and its fleece serve as symbols of sacrifice and redemption.
Example
Example in poetry:
The Golden Fleece myth transforms the shepherd's most practical annual harvest — the wool shorn from his sheep — into the object of the greatest heroic quest in classical mythology; Spenser's "Faerie Queene" and other allegorical poems deploy fleece to move between the pastoral and the heroic, the ordinary shepherd's wealth becoming the sign of divine favor and the goal of extraordinary effort; A poet might write "the fleece came away in his hands like a second skin the sheep had agreed to surrender, warm and lanolin-rich, the year's work made tangible"; In Christian poetry the fleece connects through the "Agnus Dei" tradition to the sacrificial lamb, the animal's woolly coat a sign of the innocence that makes sacrifice possible and meaningful; The whiteness of fleece — its association with snow, with purity, with undyed natural fiber — makes it in poetry an image of original innocence, the natural state before the dyeing, processing, and transformation that human industry imposes; Virgil's Eclogues imagine a golden age when fleeces grow naturally golden on the sheep's back, the dyer's labor made unnecessary by nature's own generosity — a vision of paradise that poets have returned to across two millennia.
Additional Notes
Fleece connects pastoral poetry to classical mythology at the most fundamental level, and students should be familiar with both the literal agricultural and the mythological symbolic dimensions of the word. The Golden Fleece — the object of Jason and the Argonauts' quest — transforms the shepherd's most practical annual harvest into a symbol of divine favor, heroic quest, and the ultimate reward of extraordinary effort. Students should note that the fleece also connects through the "Agnus Dei" tradition (the Lamb of God) to Christian symbolism, and through the "white as wool" imagery of Isaiah and Revelation to eschatological purification. The whiteness and softness of fleece — its associations with snow, innocence, and comfort — make it one of pastoral poetry's most emotionally appealing images. Students should distinguish between the fleece as the intact woolly coat of the living sheep, the fleece as the shorn wool immediately after shearing (warm, oily with lanolin, with the shape of the animal still in it), and the processed fiber ready for spinning. Each stage carries different connotations. Related terms: shearing, fold, kine, shepherd.
Also Known As
wool shearing clip fell
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