gossamer
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈɡɒ.sə.mə/
ipa: /ˈɡɑ.sə.mɚ/
Forms: form: gossamers
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.
Senses: examples: text: A lover may bestride the gossamer / That idles in the wanton summer air, / And yet not fall; so light is vanity.
ref: 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]:
text: The filmy Gossamer now flitts no more,
ref: 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:
text: 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.
ref: 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:
text: The dew and gossamer had dried early from the grass
ref: 1972, Richard Adams, chapter 26, in Watership Down, Penguin, published 1974, part 2, page 233:
glosses: A fine film made up of cobwebs, seen floating in the air or caught on bushes, etc.
examples: text: Madame wiped the picture with her gossamer handkerchief and impulsively pressed a tender kiss upon the painted canvas.
ref: 1894, Kate Chopin, “A Lady of Bayou St. John”, in Bayou Folk, Boston, Mass.: Houghton, Mifflin, page 306:
text: She takes a large, gossamer scarf from the trunk and drapes it about her shoulders.
ref: 1947, Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire, New York, N.Y.: Signet, Scene 5, p. 84:
text: a circle of popes or maybe bishops in white gossamer robes
ref: 2013, Rachel Kushner, chapter 14, in The Flamethrowers, New York: Scribner, page 231:
glosses: A soft, sheer fabric.
glosses: Anything delicate, light and flimsy.
Derived terms: gossamered
gossamerlike
gossamer spider
gossamer-thin
gossamer-winged butterfly
gossamery