gossamer
UK/ˈɡɒ.sə.mə/US/ˈɡɑ.sə.mɚ/
gossamer noun: a fine film made up of cobwebs, seen floating in the air or caught on bushes, etc.
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Noun
gossamer (countable and uncountable, plural gossamers)
- A fine film made up of cobwebs, seen floating in the air or caught on bushes, etc.
- A lover may bestride the gossamer / That idles in the wanton summer air, / And yet not fall; so light is vanity.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...
- The filmy Gossamer now flitts no more,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
- A soft, sheer fabric.
- Madame wiped the picture with her gossamer handkerchief and impulsively pressed a tender kiss upon the painted canvas.1894, Kate Chopin, “A Lady of Bayou St. John”, in Bayou Folk, Boston, Mass.: Houghton, Mifflin, page 306
- She takes a large, gossamer scarf from the trunk and drapes it about her shoulders.1947, Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire, New York, N.Y.: Signet, Scene 5, p. 84
- Anything delicate, light and flimsy.
Adjective
gossamer (comparative more gossamer, superlative most gossamer)
- Tenuous, light, filmy or delicate.
- 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.1845, Edgar Allan Poe, “The Black Cat”, in Tales, New York: Wiley and Putnam, page 37
- 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!1857, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Daisy's Necklace: And What Came of It
- Synonyms:
- gossamery, gossamer-thin
gossamer meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada
gossamer in Tamil
- சிலந்தி நூல்
gossamer in Bengali
- অত্যন্ত পাতলা ও হালকা, ফিনফিনে, মাকড়সার জালের মতো সূক্ষ্ম
gossamer in Malayalam
- മാറാല, ചിലന്തിവല, നേരിയ നൂലോ തന്തുവോ
gossamer in Kannada
- ನವಿರು, ತೆಳ್ಳಗೆ, ಹಗುರ
Examples of gossamer in a sentence
- 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.1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 22, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751...
- The dew and gossamer had dried early from the grass1972, Richard Adams, chapter 26, in Watership Down, Penguin, published 1974, part 2, page 233:
- a circle of popes or maybe bishops in white gossamer robes2013, Rachel Kushner, chapter 14, in The Flamethrowers, New York: Scribner, page 231:
- The vague and careless rain looked like threads of gossamer silver passing across the light of the arc-lamps.1922, Michael Arlen, “Ep./1/2”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days:
Synonyms of gossamer
Forms of gossamer
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | gossamers |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more gossamer |
| superlative | most gossamer |
Origin of 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”) 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.
Words formed from gossamer
Phrases with gossamer
Questions about gossamer
- What does gossamer mean?
- Gossamer means a fine film made up of cobwebs, seen floating in the air or caught on bushes, etc.
- What is gossamer in Tamil?
- Gossamer in Tamil is சிலந்தி நூல். See Gossamer meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use gossamer in a sentence?
- 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.
- What part of speech is gossamer?
- Gossamer can be a noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce gossamer?
- Gossamer is pronounced /ˈɡɒ.sə.mə/ (UK).
- What is the plural of gossamer?
- The plural of gossamer is gossamers.
Words near gossamer in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gossamer (page history and authors); gossamer (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Gossamer (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gossamer (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gossamer (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-gossamer.ogg.
Cite this entry: “gossamer.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gossamer. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.