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:
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
Or, he’ll see a moth with cobweb stuck on its antenna, and he’ll calmly, lovingly remove it.
From New York Times ● Dec. 12, 2018
At the bottom of the satchel was a black wooden box, and inside on a bed of velvet was a necklace in the shape of a diamond cobweb with a great sapphire at its center.
From "Ash" by Malinda Lo
The room, indeed, appeared spooky and abandoned with cobwebs and Fey wearing a robe made out of Paddington, which she said she got after hosting “SNL UK” last month.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 5, 2026
But the full force of energy bursting from Cyclops' visor should obliterate those cobwebs.
From BBC ● Jan. 9, 2026
"And when we added the methyl groups back to the genes, they turned off again. So, these compounds aren't cobwebs -- they're anchors."
From Science Daily ● Jan. 5, 2026
For now, though, investors should prepare to shake off the cobwebs over tech stocks, according to Newton.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 24, 2025
Then, having picked off the cobwebs, she pressed the yarrow leaves to his forehead.
From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver
The mythology of Do Your Job and The Patriot Way looked cobwebbed and possibly overrated.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 28, 2025
We wring our hands like maiden aunts as they mosey blithely into danger: What could possibly go wrong in this cobwebbed basement/cabin in the woods/polygamist doomsday cult?
From New York Times ● May 25, 2023
“I am leashed it looks like, manacled; cobwebbed, that’s closer,” she says.
From Slate ● Aug. 9, 2018
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
Ominously, there were many cobwebbed boxes piled on a table where Harry was clearly supposed to sit; they had an aura of tedious, hard, and pointless work about them.
From "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling
Many a foreign line will also be flying them, cobwebbing the steadily shrinking globe with faster routes.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
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.
