Gossamers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A very light and delicate material, often created by spiders, that resembles airy fabrics or suggests a fragile, ethereal quality
2. A thin, translucent substance produced by spiders, akin to fragile textiles or something seemingly insubstantial and airy
3. A fine, airy material spun by spiders that appears extremely fragile and delicate

Etymology: Cobwebs were once named after geese. In Middle English, "gossomer" (attested from around 1300) joined "gos", meaning goose, to "somer", meaning summer. It named a stretch of warm weather in late autumn, the season when geese were eaten, and it was applied to the fine webs that drifted across fields at that time of year. The source of the link is uncertain: the webs may have been common then, or they may have been likened to goose-down. Other English regions had similar names. Middle Scots had "goesomer" and "goe-summer" for summery weather in late autumn, and dialectal English had "go-harvest". Later speakers reshaped these into forms that looked like "go", but the original goose connection survives in the folk name "summer-goose", recorded in Craven, where the webs themselves were given the name. Across Europe, both the weather and the webs tend to get whimsical names. German speakers call the same season "Altweibersommer", or "old wives' summer", and use it for both Indian summer and cobwebs.

Synonyms: sheer fabrics, light materials, delicate threads, fine webs, floaty textiles