Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Insile

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

IN'SILE. (Lucret. v. 1352.) The real meaning of this word is doubtful. Some think that it expresses the same object as the "treadle" of a modern loom, which is pressed down by the foot of the weaver to work the leash rods or "heddles," and make them decussate the warp. Schneider, on the contrary (Index. Script. R. R. s. Tela), considers it to mean the heddles themselves, which move up and down as they open the warp. In both cases it is derived from insilio; and must have reference to a horizontal loom, and not an upright one, which does not require any treadle, and in which the heddles do not move up and down, but backward and forward; but, though a horizontal loom of a very primitive kind, and doubtless of a very ancient model, is still used in India, all the representations which remain to us of Egyptian and Roman looms are upright ones.