gossamer

英文词源

gossamer

gossamer: [14] It would be pleasant to think that gossamer, originally ‘fine cobwebs’, is a descendant of an earlier goose-summer, but unfortunately there is not enough evidence to make this more than a conjecture. The theory goes as follows: mid-autumn is a time when geese for the table are plentiful (November was once known as gänsemonat ‘geese-month’ in German), and so a warm period around then might have been termed goose-summer (we now call it an Indian summer); the silken filaments of gossamer are most commonly observed floating in the air on such warm autumnal days; and so the spiders’ webs were christened with the name of the season.

gossamer (n.)

c. 1300, "filmy substance (actually spider threads) found in fields of stubble in late fall," apparently from gos "goose" (see goose (n.)) + sumer "summer" (see summer (n.)). Not found in Old English. The reference might be to a fancied resemblance of the silk to goose down, or more likely it is shifted from an original sense of "late fall; Indian summer" because geese are in season then. Compare Swedish equivalent sommartrad "summer thread," Dutch zommerdraden (plural). The German equivalent mädchensommer (literally "girls' summer") also has a sense of "Indian summer," and there was a Scottish go-summer "period of summer-like weather in late autumn" (1640s, folk-etymologized as if from go). Thus the English word originally might have referred to a warm spell in autumn before being transferred to a phenomenon especially noticeable then. Compare obsolete Scottish go-summer "period of summer-like weather in late autumn." Meaning "anything light or flimsy" is from c. 1400; as a type of gauze used for veils, 1837. The adjective sense "filmy, light as gossamer" is attested from 1802.