different between silken vs gossamer

English

Etymology

From Middle English silken, selken, seolkene, from Old English seolcen, equivalent to silk +? -en (“made of”). Cognate with Scots selkin, silkin (“silken”), Icelandic silki (“silken”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?s?lk?n/
• Hyphenation: silk?en

Adjective

silken (not comparable)

1. Made of silk.

   a silken veil

2. Having a smooth, soft, or light texture, like that of silk; suggestive of silk.
   • 1646, Richard Crashaw, “Vpon Mr. Staninough’s Death” in Steps to the Temple: Sacred Poems, with Other Delights of the Muses, London: Humphrey Moseley, p. 40,^[1]

     Come then youth, Beauty, and Blood, all ye soft powers,

     Whose silken flatteryes swell a few fond houres.

   • 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, London: J. Johnson, Part I, Chapter 9, p. 322,^[2]

     […] love is not to be bought, in any sense of the words, its silken wings are instantly shrivelled up when any thing beside a return in kind is sought.

   • 1855, Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South, Chapter 1,^[3]

     […] in spite of the buzz in the next room, Edith had rolled herself up into a soft ball of muslin and ribbon, and silken curls, and gone off into a peaceful little after-dinner nap.

   • 1994, Stephen Fry, The Hippopotamus, Random House, 2010, Chapter 2, p. 37,^[4]

     He heard the silken rustle of a dressing-gown being drawn on.

3. (figuratively, of speech, singing, oratory, etc.) Smoothly uttered; flowing, subtle, or convincing in presentation.
   • c. 1594, William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V, Scene 2,^[5]

     Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,

     Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,

     Figures pedantical; these summer-flies

     Have blown me full of maggot ostentation:

4. Dressed in silk.
   • c. 1596, William Shakespeare, King John, Act V, Scene 1,^[6]

     […] shall a beardless boy,

     A cocker’d silken wanton, brave our fields […] ?

   • 1633, John Donne, “Satyre I” in Poems, London: John Marriot, p. 327,^[7]

     Yet though he cannot skip forth now to greet

     Every fine silken painted foole we meet,

     He then to him with amorous smiles allures,

   • 1724, Aaron Hill, The Plain Dealer, London: S. Richardson & A. Wilde, 1730, Volume 2, No. 81, 28 December, 1724, p. 197,^[8]

     Last Saturday was three Weeks, at Two, in the Afternoon, I sent out my Servant, to watch a Couple of these Silken Strollers, and keep, if possible, within Ken of them.

   • 1968, Jan Morris, Pax Britannica: The Climax of Empire, London: Faber & Faber, 2010, Chapter 10, p. 200,^[9]

     […] the Viceroy moved magnificently through India, resplendent with all the colour and dash of the vast Empire at his feet, with his superb bodyguard jangling scarlet beside his carriage, silken Indian princes bowing at his carpet, generals quivering at the salute and ceremonial salutes of thirty-one guns […]

Synonyms

• (made of silk): seric (rare)

Derived terms

• silkenly

Translations

Verb

silken (third-person singular simple present silkens, present participle silkening, simple past and past participle silkened)

1. (transitive) To render silken or silklike.

   silkening body lotion

   • 1757, John Dyer, The Fleece, London: R. & J. Dodsley, Book I, lines 492-494, p. 30,^[10]

     Or, if your sheep are of Silurian breed,

     Nightly to house them dry on fern or straw,

     Silk’ning their fleeces.

   • 1987, Derek Walcott, “The Light of the World” in The Arkansas Testament, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 48,^[11]

     […] these lights silkened her black skin:

Anagrams

• Elkins, Kinsel, Lesnik, inkles, k-lines, klines, likens

Middle English

Adjective

silken

1. Alternative form of selken

Norwegian Bokmål

Noun

silken m

1. definite singular of silke

Norwegian Nynorsk

Noun

silken m

1. definite singular of silke

English

Etymology

From Middle English 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”) (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.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /???.s?.m?/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /???.s?.m?/

Noun

gossamer (countable and uncountable, plural gossamers)

1. A fine film or strand as of cobwebs, floating in the air or caught on bushes, etc.
2. A soft, sheer fabric.
3. Anything delicate, light and flimsy.

Derived terms

• gossamery (adjective)
• gossamer-thin (adjective)

Translations

Adjective

gossamer (comparative more gossamer, superlative most gossamer)

1. Tenuous, light, filmy or delicate.
   • 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!

Synonyms

• gossamery
• gossamer-thin

Translations

References