Thin, delicate nets made by spiders to catch insects; also used to mean dusty or neglected areas.
From Middle English 'coppe' (meaning spider, from Old English), combined with 'web.' The word originally referred literally to spider webs, but by the 1600s was being used metaphorically for anything dusty or forgotten, like 'cobwebs in the mind.'
Spider silk is stronger than steel of the same thickness, which is why those delicate cobwebs can hold insects many times heavier than the spider—yet we use the word to mean fragile and weak!
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