cobweb means A spiderweb, or the remains of one, especially an asymmetrical one that is woven with an irregular pattern of threads. It carries an Arena rating of 1795, earned across 26 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, cobweb ranks #234 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words, #846 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words, #888 of 17,140 for Most Whimsical Words, #977 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words.
cobweb is pronounced /ˈkɒbwɛb/.
Why “cobweb” is a great word
The delicate, dust-laden network of an abandoned spiderweb, especially one spun in an irregular, ragged fashion. Its etymology is anchored in the Old English *-coppe*, found in *atorcoppe* (‘poison-head,’ a grimly apt name for a spider), and *web*, tracing a lineage back through Middle English *copweb*. Unlike “spiderweb,” which speaks of active, fresh industry, or “gossamer,” which conjures weightless, drifting filaments, a cobweb is a ghost of that industry—a relic. It is the silken shroud gathering ash in a forgotten corner, the gauze veiling a disused lampshade, the intricate ruin sagging from a ceiling beam—architecture reclaimed by stillness and neglect.
Etymology
From Middle English copweb, coppeweb. Compare Middle Dutch kopwebbe, German Low German Kobbenwebbe (Westphalian). By surface analysis, cob (“spider”, obsolete) + web.
noun
- A spiderweb, or the remains of one, especially an asymmetrical one that is woven with an irregular pattern of threads.e.g.“[…] there was stretched across his gateway a circular cobweb of the largest kind and quite entire. This looked so ominous that I actually turned aside and went in the back way.” — 1865, Henry David Thoreau, chapter X, in Cape Cod, Provincetown, page 200:
- One of its filaments; gossamer.
- Something thin and unsubstantial, or flimsy and worthless; valueless remainder.e.g.“blow the cobwebs away”
- An intricate plot to catch the unwary.e.g.“Entangled in the cobwebs of the schools.” — 1782–1785, William Cowper, “(please specify the page)”, in The Task, a Poem, […], London: […] J[oseph] Johnson; […], →OCLC:
- A web page that either has not been updated for a long time, or that is rarely visited.
- The European spotted flycatcher, Muscicapa striata.
- fuzzy inexact memories.e.g.“I washed my face, trying to get the cobwebs of hard sex and an alcohol-induced sleep out of my head” — 2008, Burlan Eugene Ellison, The Ebony Coffin: A Jim Kirkwood Novel, page 98:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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