cobweb
Americannoun
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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
L.A. was once wetlands fed by the cobweb streams and marshes of the L.A.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 29, 2021
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
I take careful little sips as I fiddle with the app, making a messy cobweb of flavor notes – herbaceous, dry, mineral, astringent – guessing wildly at intensity levels.
From The Guardian ● May 23, 2018
But now that it was deprived of the late owner’s dedicated attention, the first threads of decay’s cobweb were being spun.
From "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote
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
For now, though, investors should prepare to shake off the cobwebs over tech stocks, according to Newton.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 24, 2025
She plans to sweep away the cobwebs and inject warmth and life into a farm mired in portentous dialogue and unmentionable secrets.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 12, 2025
The collection had been tucked under a pile of old newspapers and cobwebs in the attic of their family home, according to a press release from Heritage Auctions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 21, 2025
“Well; it’s a good thing, you know. It brushes the Newgate cobwebs away, and pleases the Aged. You wouldn’t mind being at once introduced to the Aged, would you? It wouldn’t put you out?”
From "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens
The mythology of Do Your Job and The Patriot Way looked cobwebbed and possibly overrated.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 28, 2025
Obama is gone, but Souza remains, brandishing his one-time access like a cobwebbed candelabra.
From Slate ● Aug. 3, 2017
When first seen, Tom Scutt’s grand salon has a look of cobwebbed desuetude, with its peeling walls and furniture sheathed in dusty plastic.
From New York Times ● Oct. 30, 2016
Imagine, for a moment, pulling down a heavy, cobwebbed music box from a high shelf in a dim corner of an antique barn.
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 20, 2016
It looked just as Harry remembered it: eerie, cobwebbed, the outlines of the house-elf heads on the wall throwing odd shadows up the staircase.
From "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling
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
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 Buck, Charles Neville
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 Dix, Edwin Asa
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.
