wire

wire

1. a slender flexible strand or rod of metal

2. a cable consisting of several metal strands twisted together

3. a flexible metallic conductor, esp one made of copper, usually insulated, and used to carry electric current in a circuit

4. anything made of wire, such as wire netting, a barbed wire fence, etc.

5. a metallic string on a guitar, piano, etc.

6. Horse racing chiefly US and Canadian the finishing line on a racecourse

7. a wire-gauze screen upon which pulp is spread to form paper during the manufacturing process

8. a snare made of wire for rabbits and similar animals

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

wire

[wīr]

(electricity)

A single bare or insulated metallic conductor having solid, stranded, or tinsel construction, designed to carry current in an electric circuit. Also known as electric wire.

(metallurgy)

A thin, flexible, continuous length of metal, usually of circular cross section.

(optics)

A filament, usually consisting of a stretched strand of spider's web or a fine metal wire, mounted in the field of view of a telescope eyepiece to serve as a reference or for measurements. Also known as web.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

wire

A filament or slender rod of drawn metal.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. Copyright © 2003 by McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

wire

Generally refers to the physical cabling in a network. "Over the wire" means transmitting the signals onto the physical medium. Increasingly, the wire is no longer metal, but glass.

Copyright © 1981-2025 by The Computer Language Company Inc. All Rights reserved. THIS DEFINITION IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. All other reproduction is strictly prohibited without permission from the publisher.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Wire

 

a lengthy metal product having a very small ratio between length and cross-sectional size (smaller than that of any other metallurgical semifinished product). The cross section of a wire can be circular and, less frequently, hexagonal, tetragonal, trapezoidal, or oval. Wire is manufactured from steel, aluminum, copper, nickel, titanium, zinc, and their corresponding alloys, as well as from refractory and noble metals; bimetallic and polymetallic wire is also manufactured.

There are two stages in wire manufacturing: (1) preparation of a billet and (2) drawing of the billet into wire of final dimensions. Billets made of steel or copper or of nickel, aluminum, or titanium alloys are primarily obtained by hot rolling. Billets made of pure aluminum, zinc, and certain copper alloys are prepared by continuous casting, while those made of noble metals, bimetals, and polymetals are obtained by pressing; pressing is also used to prepare billets of aluminum and nickel alloys in small-scale production. Refractory metals, for example, tungsten, are shaped into billets by the rotary forging of sintered powder fillets.

Wire is manufacured with diameters ranging from 0.005 to 17 mm and with various surface qualities, including dark, light, ground, and polished surfaces. In many cases, wire is subjected to heat treatments, for example, annealing, normalizing, or hardening. Steel wire may have an anticorrosive coating; it may be galvanized, tinned, oxidized, or lacquered.

Wire is used in the manufacture of electric conductors, hardware, springs, precision drills, thermocouples, electrodes, and terminals of electronic equipment.

M. Z. ERMANOK

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.