• Today's Word

Gossamer

🔊 Listen to the word Gossamer

GOS-uh-mer

Definition

(noun/adjective) Extremely light, thin, and delicate material; something so fine and insubstantial it is almost transparent.

Example

The morning light caught the gossamer threads of a spider’s web stretched between the fence posts.

Word Origin

From Middle English gossomer — likely from “goose summer,” a name for the warm autumn weather around November when fine floating cobwebs are most visible drifting through the air. The word originally referred specifically to those floating threads of spider silk seen on still autumn days. Over time it became an adjective for anything equally fine and light.

Fun Fact

Gossamer spider silk is, weight for weight, stronger than steel — a strand the thickness of a pencil could theoretically stop a Boeing 747. Yet a single thread is completely invisible to the naked eye. Engineers and material scientists have been trying to artificially replicate spider silk for decades for applications in bulletproof vests, surgical thread, and aerospace materials — with very limited success. The most delicate-seeming thing in nature turns out to be among the strongest materials ever studied.