skein

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A length of thread or yarn wound in a loose long coil.
• noun Something suggesting the coil of a skein; a complex tangle.
• noun A flock of geese or similar birds in flight.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun An obsolete form of skean.
• noun A fixed length of any thread or yarn of silk, wool, linen, or cotton, doubled again and again and knotted.
• noun A flight or company: said of certain wild fowl, as geese or ducks.
• noun A shaved split of osier used in wickerwork.
• noun In a vehicle, the iron head or thimble upon the end of a wooden axletree, inclusive of the straps by which it is attached to the axle, and which, being set in recesses flush with the wood, afford hearing surfaces for the box in the hub.
• To wind (yarn) into hanks of definite lengths other than the normal.
• noun In cytology, same as spireme.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun A quantity of yarn, thread, or the like, put up together, after it is taken from the reel, -- usually tied in a sort of knot.
• noun (Wagon Making) A metallic strengthening band or thimble on the wooden arm of an axle.
• noun (Zoöl.), Prov. Eng. A flight of wild fowl (wild geese or the like).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A quantity of yarn, thread, or the like, put up together, after it is taken from the reel. A skein of cotton yarn is formed by eighty turns of the thread round a fifty-four inch reel.
• noun figuratively A web, a weave, a tangle.
• noun wagonmaking A metallic strengthening band or thimble on the wooden arm of an axle.
• noun zoology, provincial England A group of wild fowl, (e.g. geese, goslings) when they are in flight.
• noun sports A winning streak.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun coils of worsted yarn