Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Tissue

Tissue , noun

[French tissu, from tissu, past participle of tisser, tistre, to weave, from Latin texere. See Text.]

1.
A woven fabric.
2.
A fine transparent silk stuff, used for veils, etc.; specifically, cloth interwoven with gold or silver threads, or embossed with figures.
A robe of tissue, stiff with golden wire. — Dryden
In their glittering tissues bear emblazed Holy memorials. — Milton
3.
(Biology) One of the elementary materials or fibres, having a uniform structure and a specialized function, of which ordinary animals and plants are composed; a texture; as, epithelial tissue; connective tissue.

The term tissue is also often applied in a wider sense to all the materials or elementary tissues, differing in structure and function, which go to make up an organ; as, vascular tissue, tegumentary tissue, etc.

4.
Figuratively: Web; texture; complicated fabrication; connected series; as, a tissue of forgeries, or of falsehood.
Unwilling to leave the dry bones of Agnosticism wholly unclothed with any living tissue of religious emotion. — A. J. Balfour
Collocations (1)
Tissue paper , very thin, gauzelike paper, used for protecting engravings in books, for wrapping up delicate articles, etc.

Tissue , transitive verb

To form tissue of; to interweave.
Covered with cloth of gold tissued upon blue. — Bacon