the.com/gossamer
Spider silk's PR name for being stupidly thin, strong, and poetic.
means A gossamer is something extremely light, delicate, and sheer — like a fine thread of cobweb or filmy fabric.
from Likely from Middle English 'gossomer,' thought to be a compound of 'goose' + 'summer' — referring to warm, still stretches of autumn (a kind of 'goose summer,' when geese were eaten) when fine strands of spider silk drift visibly through the air. Nobody is fully certain of the link, but the goose-summer theory is the one most etymologists lean on.
- origin
- from goose summer, when geese were eaten and cobwebs drifted
- strength
- tougher per weight than steel, somehow
- usage
- now means anything delicate enough to insult with a sneeze