Crossword clues for gossamer
gossamer
- Light and filmy
- Very light, delicate material
- A gauze fabric with an extremely fine texture
- Filaments from a cobweb
- Filmy cobweb
- Material from the web, or feasible plan to keep a lot back
- Spider’s silk
- Fine product of spiders
- Fine gauze fabric
- Try identical fitting in terminals of similar light
- Thin material sags more when crumpled
- Sheer fabric
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Gossamer \Gos"sa*mer\, n. [OE. gossomer, gossummer, gosesomer, perh. for goose summer, from its downy appearance, or perh. for God's summer, cf. G. mariengarr gossamer, properly Mary's yarn, in allusion to the Virgin Mary. Perhaps the E. word alluded to a legend that the gossamer was the remnant of the Virgin Mary's winding sheet, which dropped from her when she was taken up to heaven. For the use of summer in the sense of film or threads, cf. G. M["a]dchensommer, Altweibersommer, fliegender Sommer, all meaning, gossamer.]
A fine, filmy substance, like cobwebs, floating in the air, in calm, clear weather, especially in autumn. It is seen in stubble fields and on furze or low bushes, and is formed by small spiders.
Any very thin gauzelike fabric; also, a thin waterproof stuff.
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An outer garment, made of waterproof gossamer.
Gossamer spider (Zo["o]l.), any small or young spider which spins webs by which to sail in the air. See Ballooning spider.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
c.1300, "spider threads spun in fields of stubble in late fall," apparently from gos "goose" + sumer "summer" (compare Swedish sommertrad "summer thread"). The reference might be to a fancied resemblance of the silk to goose down, or because geese are in season then. The German equivalent mädchensommer (literally "girls' summer") also has a sense of "Indian summer," and the English word originally may have referred to a warm spell in autumn before being transferred to a phenomenon especially noticable then. Compare obsolete Scottish go-summer "period of summer-like weather in late autumn." Meaning "anything light or flimsy" is from c.1400. The adjective sense "filmy" is attested from 1802.
Wiktionary
a. tenuous, light, filmy or delicate. n. 1 A fine film or strand as of cobwebs, floating in the air or caught on bushes etc. 2 A soft, sheer fabric. 3 Anything delicate, light and flimsy.
WordNet
adj. characterized by unusual lightness and delicacy; "this smallest and most ethereal of birds"; "gossamer shading through his playing" [syn: ethereal]
so thin as to transmit light; "a hat with a diaphanous veil"; "filmy wings of a moth"; "gauzy clouds of dandelion down"; "gossamer cobwebs"; "sheer silk stockings"; "transparent chiffon"; "vaporous silks" [syn: diaphanous, filmy, gauzy, see-through, sheer, transparent, vaporous, cobwebby]
n. a gauze fabric with an extremely fine texture
filaments from a cobweb [syn: cobweb]
Wikipedia
Gossamer is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. The character is a hairy, orange monster. His rectangular body is perched on two giant tennis shoes, and his heart-shaped face is composed of only two oval eyes and a wide mouth, with two hulking arms ending in dirty, clawed fingers. The monster's main trait, however, is bright uncombed orange hair. A gag in the 1980 short Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24½th Century lampoons this by revealing that Gossamer is composed entirely of hair. He was originally voiced by Mel Blanc and has been voiced by Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, Joe Alaskey, Jim Cummings, and Kwesi Boakye.
The word "gossamer" means any sort of thin, fragile, transparent material — in particular, it can refer to a kind of delicate, sheer gauze or a light cobweb. The name is meant to be ironic, since the character is large, menacing, and destructive.
Gossamer commonly refers to:
- Fine spider silk used by spiderlings for ballooning or kiting
- Gossamer (fabric), very light, sheer, gauze-like fabric
Gossamer may also refer to:
Gossamer (2006) is a novel with elements of both fantasy and realism for young adults by Lois Lowry.
Gossamer is the second studio album by American indie pop band Passion Pit, released on July 20, 2012 by Columbia Records. Recorded in Los Angeles and New York City in 2011, the album was produced by Chris Zane, who also produced the band's debut album Manners (2009), and lead singer Michael Angelakos.
In an August 2010 interview with the NME, Angelakos stated that work had already begun on the follow-up to Manners, and that the band intended to release the album in the spring of 2011. "It's gonna be a really fantastic, exciting, beautiful, gorgeous record. An absolutely beautiful record. I'm so excited", he said. The album's title was announced on April 24, 2012, along with its release date of July 23, 2012.
Gossamer (foaled 20 February 1999) is a British thoroughbred racehorse and broodmare. In a racing career which lasted from July 2001 until October 2002 she won four of her eight starts and was one of the best fillies of her generation in Europe at both two and three years of age. As a juvenile she was undefeated in three starts, following up a win in a maiden race with victories in the Group Three Prestige Stakes and the Group One Fillies' Mile. Despite fears that her diminutive stature made her unlikely to improve as a three-year-old, and a defeat when favourite the 1000 Guineas she recovered to record an emphatic success in the Irish 1000 Guineas. The best of her three subsequent appearances came when she finished third to the colt Rock of Gibraltar in the Prix du Moulin. Since her retirement from racing she has become a successful broodmare.
Usage examples of "gossamer".
And lighter than the gossamer She led the bobbers following her, Past old acquaintances, and where They made the stranger stupid stare.
Newt buzzed into the air, his gossamer wings invisible with the speed of their flapping.
The sprite buzzed into the air, hovering on his gossamer wings, as the troll lumbered along beside him.
Iron muscles in leg and torso are vital in the danseur, who must help maintain the illusion that his whirling partner is made of fairy gossamer, seeking to wing skyward from his restraining arms.
No curve of her slender body was hidden by the single gossamer garment she wore, and in all his life Esterling had never seen a girl half so lovely.
With luck, one of them was small and blue and gauzily streaked with gossamer white.
On the hundreds of worlds explored and colonized during and after the Hegira, most of the indigenous life discovered had been plants and a few very simple organisms, such as the radiant gossamers on Hyperion.
In these split seconds I became aware that this spider-witch, capable of producing from its own fleshly case a string of ectoplasmic gossamer, could thereby reshape and refashion as it chose.
The gossamer cloth seemed like nothing more than a vaporish veil, bent on playing havoc with his senses.
Above the searing accretion disk, in hovering clouds, gossamer herds fed.
How serene does she now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan hour, shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what do you call it gossamer.
Einstein had parchmenty skin, a soft nimbus of gossamer hair, green veins through which the young physicist could see the blood slowly move.
He walked through the gelatinous wall of his vessel and stepped out, unprotected except for a film of sparkling moisture and his pearlescent gossamer garment, onto black ice and grayish-white snow.
The alien Akerataeli appeared to be missing until Aenea pointed to a place far out among the branches where the microgravity was even less, and there -- between the gossamers and glowbirds -- floated the platelet beings.
In winter it was less so, but now, with spring but days away, the yellow and purple polyanthuses were flowering, and the cherry trees were thick with blossom, gossamer thin petals of faded coral.