cobweb
Americannoun
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cobwebs
plural
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a web spun by a spider to entrap its prey.
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a single thread spun by a spider.
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something resembling a cobweb; anything finespun, flimsy, or insubstantial.
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a network of plot or intrigue; an insidious snare.
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cobwebs, confusion, indistinctness, or lack of order.
I'm so tired my head is full of cobwebs.
verb (used with object)
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to cover with or as with cobwebs.
Spiders cobwebbed the cellar.
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to confuse or muddle.
Drunkenness cobwebbed his mind.
noun
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a web spun by certain spiders, esp those of the family Theridiidae, often found in the corners of disused rooms
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a single thread of such a web
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something like a cobweb, as in its flimsiness or ability to trap
Usage
What does cobweb mean? Cobweb is another word for a spider web. But cobweb is most commonly used to refer to the kind of dusty old spider webs that hang in the corners of places that haven’t been used or cleaned in a long time, like attics and abandoned houses. For that reason, cobweb is often used in expressions like clean out the cobwebs, meaning to do something to clear your mind or make it function normally again, perhaps after a period of inactivity or confusion. Cobweb can also be used as a verb, meaning to cover in cobwebs, as in No one had entered the study for years, and spiders had cobwebbed the entire bookcase. Example: The abandoned house was dusty and full of cobwebs.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of cobweb
1275–1325; Middle English coppeweb, derivative of Old English -coppe spider (in ātorcoppe poison spider); cognate with Middle Dutch koppe; see web
Explanation
A cobweb is the net of sticky threads that a spider weaves to catch insects. You can also call a cobweb a spider's web. A cobweb is any spider's web, although some people use it to specify the dense, tangled type of web that certain spiders weave, or to mean a dusty old web, like the ones you might see in your grandparents' attic. Cobweb can also describe some intricate or complicated things: "She got lost in the cobweb of unfamiliar subway lines in the city." It comes from the Old English coppeweb, from the now-obsolete coppe, "spider."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Why ask someone else to climb a stepladder to reach a cobweb?
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 5, 2026
Make a homemade spider toss game that transforms your living room floor into a huge cobweb.
From Salon ● Oct. 30, 2025
Before the space-warrior saga, she traversed the Spider-Verse with cobweb and spider detailing on her “Spider-Man” press tour ensembles.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 25, 2024
That resourcefulness is on full display in Alcaraz’s DIY videos, where he fashions a Halloween feast complete with cobweb funnel cakes and unicorn horns made from meringue.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 4, 2023
It was more like a thick, tattered cobweb.
From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
Brown is eager to wipe off the cobwebs that were growing between his fingers in Philly.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 8, 2026
That was once the HBO way, after all: taking a chance on new visions, instead of blowing the cobwebs off old ones.
From Salon ● Aug. 27, 2026
This design closely matches earlier observations of crystal formations described as "cobwebs," which spread outward from a central point where the multifaceted ends meet.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 16, 2026
But the full force of energy bursting from Cyclops' visor should obliterate those cobwebs.
From BBC ● Jan. 9, 2026
I wanted to smother that feeling, to clear it from our lives like cobwebs from a dusty corner.
From "The Book of Unknown Americans" by Cristina Henríquez
Brown’s cobwebbed mitts are gone and QB Jalen Hurts is spreading the gospel of a “shared mission.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 8, 2026
Looking up at the low, cobwebbed ceiling, from which an electric light hung, she said, “It needs a vent up there.”
From New York Times ● Oct. 22, 2022
The pulped peppers return to Avery Island and are aged for three years in stacked oak barrels towering in a pungent, cobwebbed warehouse before salt and vinegar is added in huge vats.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 27, 2018
Obama is gone, but Souza remains, brandishing his one-time access like a cobwebbed candelabra.
From Slate ● Aug. 3, 2017
Even in the noise that swelled to the cobwebbed tavern ceilings, they spoke of her in hushed, reverent tones: “Current will never steer you wrong.”
From "The Reader" by Traci Chee
With rich detail he told readers about one Pierre Grantaire who made a good living by raising and selling spiders for the spurious cobwebbing of wine bottles.
From Time Magazine Archive
Many a foreign line will also be flying them, cobwebbing the steadily shrinking globe with faster routes.
From Time Magazine Archive
There is still the cobwebbing music from beyond and now also a musty cardboard stench in the alley and the frequent whiff of garbage.
From "How It Went Down" by Kekla Magoon
The inevitable thin lines of mist are already cobwebbing the horizons; but there is a good breeze abroad to-day and the clouds are not resting so quietly in the niches as usual.
From A Midsummer Drive Through the Pyrenees by Edwin Asa Dix
When she had watched him tramp up the muddy slope from the bank to the street, Alexander lifted her chin and tossed her head, as if to shake away some cobwebbing thought from the brain.
From A Pagan of the Hills by Charles Neville Buck
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
