cobwebbery

English

Etymology

cobweb +‎ -ery

Noun

cobwebbery (countable and uncountable, plural cobwebberies)

  1. (chiefly figuratively) A mass of cobwebs; anything that obscures the vision or is elaborate yet flimsy.
    • 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, (please specify |book=I or IV, or the page):
      When, across the hundredfold poor scepticisms, trivialisms and constitutional cobwebberies of Dryasdust, you catch any glimpse of a William the Conqueror, a Tancred of Hauteville or suchlike, — do you not discern veritably some rude outline of a true God-made King […] ?
    • 1878, The Literary World, volume 9, page 43:
      Much of the cobwebbery of superstition, ancient and modern, is readily brushed away by this confident and sure hand; but there are other facts, facts of Christian consciousness, which do not, from our standpoint, disappear so readily.
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