Web

How to spell web

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce web

What does web mean?

1. nounA network of fine silk threads spun by a spider to catch prey.
2. nounThe global system of linked documents and pages accessed over the internet.
3. nounA complex, interconnected set of things, people, or events.

Web in a sentence

• A single web stretched across the garden shed doorway.

• The company published its annual report on the web for anyone to read.

• The detective slowly unravelled a web of lies told by the suspect.

• Dew made every strand of the spider's web glisten at dawn.

• He searched the web for a cheaper flight to Lisbon.

• A dense web of roads connects the small towns in the valley.

Where does web come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes straight from the Old English webb, which meant a woven fabric or the result of weaving, and it traces back to the same Germanic root that gave us the verb 'weave'. That root carried the plain idea of crossing threads over and under one another, so a web was originally just cloth on the loom. From there English extended it to the delicate net of silk threads a spider spins, since that too is a kind of woven structure. The figurative sense, a complicated network of connected things such as a 'web of lies', grew naturally from the image of many strands crossing. In the late twentieth century the word was borrowed again for the World Wide Web, the global network of linked documents, keeping the same picture of countless strands joined together. The spelling is short and phonetic, so the only thing to remember is the single b at the end.

How the word is built

• web (single root from Old English webb: woven fabric); no prefix or suffix