the.com/dragline
A silk so tough spiders use it as a lifeline, literally, while they build everything else.
means The strongest strand of silk a spider produces, used as a safety line and frame-building cable, and also the name for a giant excavating machine that drags a bucket across the ground on cables.
from Compound of 'drag' + 'line' — in engineering, it named the cable-and-bucket excavator that drags its scoop along the earth, a term from industrial mining machinery. Arachnologists later borrowed the same plain, functional word for the spider's own hauling cable: the thread it drags behind as a tether while it moves, strong enough to catch its fall. Same logic, wildly different scale — one strung from a crane, one from a spinneret.
- tensile strength
- stronger than steel by weight
- job description
- frame, safety rope, and web anchor
- toughness secret
- stretches before it snaps, unlike steel
- also means
- giant excavator bucket for strip mining