spider web
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of spider web
First recorded in 1525–35
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.
The song itself is a brooding ballad with an astonishing vocal climax, but will it leave voters trapped in a spider web of indecision?
From BBC • May 8, 2026
"I'm really interested to see what they do on that," she said, adding that processing still includes a "spider web of entities" where Chinese officials maintain outsized control.
From Barron's • Oct. 30, 2025
Now Wall Street prices could be quoted the same day in Philadelphia, and soon in Boston, Buffalo and west to the Mississippi as the telegraph covered the nation like a spider web.
From The Wall Street Journal • Sep. 28, 2025
Lifshitz, an 85-year-old grandmother who was freed by Hamas, said that after she was seized, she was taken into underground tunnels that she compared to a spider web.
From Reuters • Nov. 22, 2023
The hedges and the acres and acres of lawn were covered in a network of spider web that caught the dew in beads so that it glistened white as frost.
From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
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.
