cobweb
/ˈkɒbwɛb
/noun
1A spider’s web, especially when old and dusty: the wooden carvings were almost obliterated by cobwebs...
- Sure enough, there it was, nestled in a corner along with a cluster of dusty cobwebs and long deceased spiders.
- Yes, I know that archives exist, but archives are invariably dusty, filled with cobwebs and virtually uninhabited.
- The house was dusty and cobwebs lined the walls.
1.1 Zoology A tangled three-dimensional spider’s web.If allowed to stand, a pellicle or cobweb may form, indicating the presence of fibrinogen.
1.2Something resembling a cobweb in delicacy or intricacy: the city fans south in a cobweb of canals...
- He paints figures in alien grays, faces piled one on top of another, and delicate cobwebs of oil paint suggesting we don't know what.
- I strip away cobwebs of fascia obscuring the anatomical structures.
- At this time of year you have them almost to yourself, and the grey winter light somehow suits the stone cobwebs of broken arches and stranded pinnacles.
Phrases
blow (or clear) away the cobwebs
Derivatives
cobwebbed
/ adjective ...- With its dark rooms, cobwebbed walls and creaking floors, the former magistrate's court is not really much to look at.
- Shuddering violently, I grabbed Josh by both shoulders, and turned him around facing the cobwebbed skeleton.
- I paid scarce attention to them as the movie began in earnest, showing a cobwebbed crypt, bathed in silvery moonlight.
cobwebby
- Does the creator of these twisted tales inhabit dank, cobwebby rooms with dusty velvet curtains and candles everywhere?
- It seems to flaunt a certain tatty extravagance, like worn plush furnishings in a cobwebby drawing room.
- They crouched in the cobwebby corner behind a pile of boxes.
Origin
Middle English coppeweb, copweb, from obsolete coppe 'spider' + web.
An old word for a spider was a coppe or cop. This was a shortened form of the Old English attercop, for spider and literally meaning ‘poison head’, which turns up in a song sung by Bilbo Baggins in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937). A spider's web came to be called a coppeweb or copweb, and this was later modified to cobweb.