# gossamer
## English
### 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.

### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈɡɒ.sə.mə/
* (General American) IPA: /ˈɡɑ.sə.mɚ/
* Audio (General Australian):(file)

### Noun

gossamer (countable and uncountable, plural gossamers)
* A fine film made up of cobwebs, seen floating in the air or caught on bushes, etc.
** c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene vi]:A lover may bestride the gossamer That idles in the wanton summer air, And yet not fall; so light is vanity.
** 1697, Virgil, “The First Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, line 453:The filmy Gossamer now flitts no more,
** 1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 22, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC, page 222:I had been dead-heavy before, and now I felt a kind of dreadful lightness, which would not suffer me to walk. I drifted like a gossamer; the ground seemed to me a cloud, the hills a feather-weight, the air to have a current, like a running burn, which carried me to and fro.
** 1972, Richard Adams, Watership Down‎, Penguin, published 1974, Part 2, Chapter 26, p. 233:The dew and gossamer had dried early from the grass
* A soft, sheer fabric.
** 1894, Kate Chopin, “A Lady of Bayou St. John”, in Bayou Folk‎, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, page 306:Madame wiped the picture with her gossamer handkerchief and impulsively pressed a tender kiss upon the painted canvas.
** 1947, Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire‎, New York: Signet, Scene 5, p. 84:She takes a large, gossamer scarf from the trunk and drapes it about her shoulders.
** 2013, Rachel Kushner, chapter 14, in The Flamethrowers, New York: Scribner, page 231:a circle of popes or maybe bishops in white gossamer robes
* Anything delicate, light and flimsy.

#### Derived terms

* gossamered
* gossamerlike
* gossamer spider
* gossamer-thin (adjective)
* gossamer-winged butterfly
* gossamery (adjective)

#### Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

### Adjective

gossamer (comparative more gossamer, superlative most gossamer)
* Tenuous, light, filmy or delicate.
** 1845, Edgar Allan Poe, “The Black Cat”, in Tales‎, New York: Wiley and Putnam, page 37: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.
** 1857, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Daisy's Necklace: And What Came of It: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!
** 1922, Michael Arlen, “Ep./1/2”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days: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.
** 1982 December 4, Mitzel, “A Sissy's Revenge”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 20, page 9:His two previous novels, though much celebrated, I found too ethereal, the style as gossamer and sticky as cotton candy.
** 1997, Arundhati Roy, chapter 2, in The God of Small Things‎, New York: Random House, page 83:A gossamer blanket of coaldust floated down like a dirty blessing and gently smothered the traffic.

#### Synonyms

* gossamery
* gossamer-thin

#### Translations
### References

* 1 2 “gọ̄s-sŏmer, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
* 1 2 “gossamer”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
* 1 2 “gossamer”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
* 1 2 “gossamer”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
* 1 2 3 Douglas Harper (2001–2025) “gossamer”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
* ↑ Joseph Wright, editor (1900), “GO-HARVEST”, in The English Dialect Dictionary: […], volume II (D–G), London: Henry Frowde, […], publisher to the English Dialect Society, […]; New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, →OCLC.
* ↑ “goesomer, n.”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC: “https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/goesomer”
* ↑ Joseph Wright, editor (1900), “GO-SUMMER”, in The English Dialect Dictionary: […], volume II (D–G), London: Henry Frowde, […], publisher to the English Dialect Society, […]; New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, →OCLC.
* ↑ Walter W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (2013 edition), page 246
* ↑ Ernest Weekley, An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (1967), volume 1, page 653