gossamer
Meanings
Plural: gossamers
Noun
- a gauze fabric with an extremely fine texture
- filaments from a web that was spun by a spider
- A fine film made up of cobwebs, seen floating in the air or caught on bushes, etc.
- A soft, sheer fabric.
- Anything delicate, light and flimsy.
Adjective Satellite
- characterized by unusual lightness and delicacy
- "gossamer shading through his playing"
- so thin as to transmit light
- "gossamer cobwebs"
Adj
- Tenuous, light, filmy or delicate.
Origin / Etymology
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.
Synonyms
cobweb, cobwebby, diaphanous, ethereal, filmy, gauze-like, gauzy, gossamer-thin, gossamery, see-through, sheer, transparent, vaporous, vapourous
Scrabble Score: 11
gossamer is a valid Scrabble (US) TWL wordgossamer is a valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
gossamer is a valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary