gossamer

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”)^[1] and to have initially referred to a period of warm weather in late autumn when geese were eaten^[2][3][4][5] — compare Middle Scots goesomer, goe-summer (“summery weather in late autumn; St Martin's summer”)^[1] and dialectal English go-harvest,^[6] both later connected in folk-etymology to go)^[5][7][8] — and to have been transferred to cobwebs because they were frequent then or because they were likened to goose-down.^[2][3][5][4] 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".^[9] Weekley notes that both the webs and the weather have fantastical names in most European languages:^[10] compare German Altweibersommer (“Indian summer; cobwebs, gossamer”, literally “old wives' summer”) and other terms listed there.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɡɒ.sə.mə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɡɑ.sə.mɚ/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

gossamer (countable and uncountable, plural gossamers)

1. 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.

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     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^[1], Penguin, published 1974, Part 2, Chapter 26, p. 233:

     The dew and gossamer had dried early from the grass

2. A soft, sheer fabric.
   • 1894, Kate Chopin, “A Lady of Bayou St. John”, in Bayou Folk‎^[2], 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^[3], 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

3. Anything delicate, light and flimsy.

gossamer (comparative more gossamer, superlative most gossamer)

1. Tenuous, light, filmy or delicate.
   • 1845, Edgar Allan Poe, “The Black Cat”, in Tales‎^[4], 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^[5], New York: Random House, page 83:

     A gossamer blanket of coaldust floated down like a dirty blessing and gently smothered the traffic.

• gossamery
• gossamer-thin