gossamer
nounEtymology
From Middle English gossomer, gosesomer, gossummer (attested since around 1300, and only in reference to webs or other light things), usually thought to derive from gos (“goose”) + somer (“summer”) and to have initially referred to a period of warm weather in late autumn when geese were eaten — compare Middle Scots goesomer, goe-summer (“summery weather in late autumn; St Martin's summer”) and dialectal English go-harvest, both later connected in folk-etymology to go — and to have been transferred to cobwebs because they were frequent then or because they were likened to goose-down. Skeat says that in Craven the webs were called summer-goose, and compares Scots and dialectal English use of summer-colt in reference to "exhalations seen rising from the ground in hot weather". Weekley notes that both the webs and the weather have fantastical names in most European languages: compare German Altweibersommer (“Indian summer; cobwebs, gossamer”, literally “old wives' summer”) and other terms listed there.
- inherited from gossomer
Definitions
A fine film made up of cobwebs, seen floating in the air or caught on bushes, etc.
- A lover may bestride the gossamer / That idles in the wanton summer air, / And yet not fall; so light is vanity.
- The filmy Gossamer now flitts no more,
A soft, sheer fabric.
- Madame wiped the picture with her gossamer handkerchief and impulsively pressed a tender kiss upon the painted canvas.
- She takes a large, gossamer scarf from the trunk and drapes it about her shoulders.
- a circle of popes or maybe bishops in white gossamer robes
Anything delicate, light and flimsy.
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Tenuous, light, filmy or delicate.
- There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
- The heaven was spangled with tremulous stars, and at the horizon the clouds hung down in gossamer folds—God's robe trailing in the sea!
- He walked. To the corner of Hamilton Place and Picadilly, and there stayed for a while, for it is a romantic station by night. The vague and careless rain looked like threads of gossamer silver passing across the light of the arc-lamps.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for gossamer. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA