You can hold a piece of silk in your mind: smooth under the hand, soft, with a quiet shine, and moving lightly when the air moves. Every use of silken can be seen as that piece of silk moving outward — first the plain statement that a thing is made of it, then the comparison that a thing feels or looks like it, and finally a voice or a manner that slides along just as easily.
From the word’s history
The supplied source traces silken to Old English seolcen, that is silk plus the ending -en meaning ‘made of’ — the same ending as in wooden and golden. The oldest sense is therefore the material one, and the comparison senses grow out from it.
來源資料把 silken 追到古英語 seolcen，也就是 silk（絲）加上字尾 -en（用某種材料做的），和 wooden、golden 同一個造法。所以最早的意思就是「絲做的」。這條線索也解釋了為什麼今天字典會把「絲製的」和「像絲一樣」放在同一個字底下：後者是從前者借畫面出去的。
Wiktionary entry supplied in this packet (source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:1029160231): ‘From Old English seolcen, from seolc (silk) + -en … Equivalent to silk + -en (made of).’
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