rope yarn

rope yarn (countable and uncountable, plural rope yarns)

1. The yarn or thread composing the strands of a rope.
   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, chapter 13

     Sideways leaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a wire; the two tall masts buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes.

2. A yarn of fibers, twisted up loosely and right-handedly.
   • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 8, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:

     That concertina was a wonder in its way. The handles that was on it first was wore out long ago, and he'd made new ones of braided rope yarn. And the bellows was patched in more places than a cranberry picker's overalls.

• Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967