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سُرْفَةٌ ذ [A certain worm, or caterpillar, or small creeping thing;] a small creeping thing that makes for itself a habitation, (S, K,) four-sided, or square, (S,) of fragments of wood, (S, K,) joining them together by means of its spittle, in the form of a نَاؤُوس [here meaning coffin], (S,) which it then enters, and [therein it] dies: (S, K:) or the silkworm: or a certain small creeping thing, dust-coloured, that constructs a beautiful habitation in which it is: or a very small creeping thing, like the half of a lentil, that bores a tree, and then constructs therein a habitation of pieces of wood, which it conjoins by means of what resembles the web of the spider: or a very small dust-coloured creeping thing, that comes to a piece of wood and excavates it, and then brings a bit of wood and puts it therein, then another, then another, and then weaves what resembles the web of the spider: or, accord. to AHn, a certain small creeping thing, like the worm, inclining in some degree to blackness, found upon the [plants called] حَمْض, that constructs a four-sided, or square, habitation, of pieces of wood, joining the extremities of these together by means of a thing [or substance] resembling the web of the spider: or the worm [or caterpillar] that weaves [a web] upon certain trees, and eats their leaves, and destroys the rest thereof by that weaving: or a certain worm [or caterpillar] like the finger, hairy, speckled with black or white, that eats the leaves of trees so as to make them bare: or a certain worm [or caterpillar] that weaves upon itself, of the size of the finger in length, a thing like the قِرْطَاس [or roll, or scroll, of paper], which it enters, so becoming unattainable: or a certain light, small creeping thing, like a spider: (M:) pl. سُرَفٌ. (TA.) Hence the prov., أَصْنَعُ مِنْ سُرْفَةٍ [More skilled in fabricating than a سُرْفَة ]. (S, M, K.) And one says also, أَخَفُّ مِنْ سُرْفَةٍ [Lighter than a سُرْفَة]. (M.)
An Arabic-English Lexicon. London. Williams and Norgate. 1863.

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