spider cloth

Noun

spider cloth (countable and uncountable, plural spider cloths)

1. (archaic) A sheer fabric made of cotton and silk.
   • Several new fabrics of cotton and silk are marvels of beauty in design and color. Spider cloth, which comes under this list, is very sheer and has a silk sheen. It is printed in floral patterns or in narrow stripes alternating with floral designs in spray or detached blossoms, the colors in all the...1907, Dry Goods Guide, New York: Black Publishing Company, p. 19
   • It was a gray morning on deck, a gray sea, a gray sky, and a gray, spider-cloth, unimportant coast of Italy not far away.1921, D. H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, New York: T. Seltzer, Chapter 8, p. 312
2. A cloth (real, hypothetical or imaginary) manufactured using spider silk.
   • A few species of spiders encourage the hope that the manufacture of spider cloth may yet become something more than a dream.1885, The Popular Science Monthly, March 1885, “Popular Miscellany,” p. 718
   • the Emperor Aurengzebe of Hindostan, who reproved his daughter for the indelicacy of her costume, although she wore as many as seven thicknesses of spider cloth!1893, Henry Christopher McCook, American Spiders and Their Spinning Work, Philadelphia: the author, Academy of Natural Science, Volume 3, Chapter 4, p. 84