gossamer
Part of speech: noun
adj
Morphological type: simple
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.
Inflected forms:
form: gossamers
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: more gossamer
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most gossamer
pos: adj
tags: superlative
Senses:
gloss: A fine film made up of cobwebs, seen floating in the air or caught on bushes, etc.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: A lover may bestride the gossamer / That idles in the wanton summer air, / And yet not fall; so light is vanity.
The filmy Gossamer now flitts no more,
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.
The dew and gossamer had dried early from the grass
gloss: A soft, sheer fabric.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: Madame wiped the picture with her gossamer handkerchief and impulsively pressed a tender kiss upon the painted canvas.
She takes a large, gossamer scarf from the trunk and drapes it about her shoulders.
a circle of popes or maybe bishops in white gossamer robes
gloss: Anything delicate, light and flimsy.
pos: noun
tags: countable
figuratively
uncountable
gloss: Tenuous, light, filmy or delicate.
pos: adj
examples: 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.
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!
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.
His two previous novels, though much celebrated, I found too ethereal, the style as gossamer and sticky as cotton candy.
A gossamer blanket of coaldust floated down like a dirty blessing and gently smothered the traffic.
Derived words: gossamered
gossamerlike
gossamer spider
gossamer-thin
gossamer-winged butterfly
gossamery
Translations: