cobweb

UK/ˈkɒbwɛb/US/ˈkɒbwɛb/

nounB1+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,815 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: cobwebs

A cobweb is the fine net a spider spins. Sweep away the cobwebs, cobwebs in the corner, blow away the cobwebs.

Strictly a cobweb is an abandoned and dusty web rather than one in use, though nobody keeps the distinction. Blow away the cobwebs means to clear your head with fresh air. The cob in it is an Old English word for a spider.

Definitions of cobweb

1nouncobwebThe fine net a spider spins.B1+
“The old shed was dark and dusty, with cobwebs hanging from every beam.”

cobweb is a web.

Where it comes from

Old English atorcoppe means a spider, from which the cob in cobweb survives, plus web.

Old English
ātorcoppe — spider
Middle English
copweb
English, today
cobweb

From Middle English copweb, coppeweb, coppewebbe, from Old English ātorcoppe (“spider”) + Old English webb. Compare Middle Dutch kopwebbe, German Low German Kobbenwebbe Westphalian. by surface analysis, en + cob + web.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

cobweb in the wild

The cobweb model or cobweb theory is an economic model that explains why prices may be subjected to periodic fluctuations in certain types of markets.
Cobweb model
Nicholas Kaldor analyzed the model in 1934, coining the term "cobweb theorem", citing previous analyses in German by Henry Schultz and Umberto Ricci.
Cobweb model
The word "cobweb" is also used by biologists to describe the tangled three-dimensional web of some spiders of the family Theridiidae.
Spider web
While this large family is known as the cobweb spiders, they actually have a range of different webs.
Spider web
Hesperia metea, the cobweb skipper, is a butterfly of the family Hesperiidae.
Hesperia metea

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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