cobweb

Noun

cobweb (plural cobwebs)

1. A spiderweb, especially a large one, an old abandoned one covered with debris and dust or an asymmetrical one woven with an irregular pattern of threads.
   • […] 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
   • A cobweb, night-spun, hung in an insidious circle from branch to branch, facing her. Early as it was, its first victim struggled in its gummy meshes.1907, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Human Toll (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, published 1980, page 286

   Synonyms:

   spiderweb, web

   1. One of a spiderweb's filaments; gossamer; anything flimsy and gauzy, intricately interconnected or otherwise like a cobweb.
      • cobweb model, cobweb theory
   2. (figuratively) An intricate plot to catch the unwary; something entangling or confusing.
      • I was confused by the cobwebs of contract law.
   3. (figuratively) Something thin and unsubstantial, or flimsy and worthless; valueless remainder.
      • blow the cobwebs away
      • The dust and cobwebs of that uncivil age.a. 1587 (date written), Phillip Sidney [i.e., Philip Sidney], An Apologie for Poetrie. […], London: […] [James Roberts] for Henry Olney, […], published 1595, →OCLC; republished as Edward Arber...
2. (informal, plural-normally) Fuzzy inexact memories; confusion.
   • I washed my face, trying to get the cobwebs of hard sex and an alcohol-induced sleep out of my head2008, Burlan Eugene Ellison, The Ebony Coffin: A Jim Kirkwood Novel, page 98
   • "Hey," she said. "You know what? After you call the hospital, why don't you go for a run? It'll help clear out the cobwebs, get rid of some of that tension. Then go back, take a nice hot shower, and―"
     "There's no shower here. Remember?"
     "Oh, right. A nice hot bath, then. Even better. And eat...2008, Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed, Ch.5, at p.116
   1. (Internet, figuratively, informal, plural-normally, rare) A web page that either has not been updated for a long time, or one that is rarely visited.
3. The European spotted flycatcher, Muscicapa striata.