gossamerとは 意味・読み方・使い方

語源

From 中期英語 gossomer, gosesomer, gossummer (attested since around 1300, and only in reference to webs or other light things), usually thought to derive from gos (“goose”) + somer (“summer”) and to have initially referred to a period of warm weather in late autumn when geese were eaten — compare Middle Scots goesomer, goe-summer (“summery weather in late autumn; St Martin's summer”) and dialectal English go-harvest, both later connected in folk-etymology to go — and to have been transferred to cobwebs because they were frequent then or because they were likened to goose-down. Skeat says that in Craven the webs were called summer-goose, and compares Scots and dialectal English use of summer-colt in reference to "exhalations seen rising from the ground in hot weather". Weekley notes that both the webs and the weather have fantastical names in most European languages: compare German Altweibersommer (“Indian summer; cobwebs, gossamer”, literally “old wives' summer”) and other terms listed there.

発音

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈɡɒ.sə.mə/
• (General American) IPA: /ˈɡɑ.sə.mɚ/

名詞

gossamer (countable and uncountable, plural gossamers)

1. A fine film made up of cobwebs, seen floating in the air or caught on bushes, etc.
   • c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene vi]:

     A lover may bestride the gossamer / That idles in the wanton summer air, / And yet not fall; so light is vanity.

   • 1697, Virgil, “The First Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, line 453:

     The filmy Gossamer now flitts no more,

   • 1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 22, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC, page 222:

     I had been dead-heavy before, and now I felt a kind of dreadful lightness, which would not suffer me to walk. I drifted like a gossamer; the ground seemed to me a cloud, the hills a feather-weight, the air to have a current, like a running burn, which carried me to and fro.

   • 1972, Richard Adams, chapter 26, in Watership Down, Penguin, published 1974, part 2, page 233:

     The dew and gossamer had dried early from the grass

2. A soft, sheer fabric.
   • 1894, Kate Chopin, “A Lady of Bayou St. John”, in Bayou Folk‎, Boston, Mass.: Houghton, Mifflin, page 306:

     Madame wiped the picture with her gossamer handkerchief and impulsively pressed a tender kiss upon the painted canvas.

   • 1947, Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire‎, New York, N.Y.: Signet, Scene 5, p. 84:

     She takes a large, gossamer scarf from the trunk and drapes it about her shoulders.

   • 2013, Rachel Kushner, chapter 14, in The Flamethrowers, New York: Scribner, page 231:

     a circle of popes or maybe bishops in white gossamer robes

3. Anything delicate, light and flimsy.

派生語

形容詞

gossamer (comparative more gossamer, superlative most gossamer)

1. Tenuous, light, filmy or delicate.
   • 1845, Edgar Allan Poe, “The Black Cat”, in Tales‎, New York: Wiley and Putnam, page 37:

     There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.

   • 1857, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Daisy's Necklace: And What Came of It:

     The heaven was spangled with tremulous stars, and at the horizon the clouds hung down in gossamer folds—God's robe trailing in the sea!

   • 1922, Michael Arlen, “Ep./1/2”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days:

     He walked. To the corner of Hamilton Place and Picadilly, and there stayed for a while, for it is a romantic station by night. The vague and careless rain looked like threads of gossamer silver passing across the light of the arc-lamps.

   • 1982 December 4, Mitzel, “A Sissy's Revenge”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 20, page 9:

     His two previous novels, though much celebrated, I found too ethereal, the style as gossamer and sticky as cotton candy.

   • 1997, Arundhati Roy, chapter 2, in The God of Small Things‎, New York: Random House, page 83:

     A gossamer blanket of coaldust floated down like a dirty blessing and gently smothered the traffic.

同意語

• gossamery
• gossamer-thin

参照