DAC90a De Spidering etc.

[Yorkie]

is cobwebbery a real word?.....

cheers Mark

Good morrow fellow 'Gobornians'

Well it is a sort of word, though in the strict terms of the OED, it would be classed as a 'non-word' which might seem a contradiction in terms, (an oxymoron even), but simply means that over time, it's a word that hasn't been in use extensively enough to gain entery into the dictionary. (Once a word goes into the OED, it's never removed).

There is in fact a limited company involved in web design called 'Cobwebbery Ltd':

http://www.cobwebbery.co.uk/about-cobwebbery.asp

And there is evidence of the word being used back to 1829.

It's also accepted as a word that can be used in Scrabble:

http://www.solverscrabble.com/words-with...obwebbery/

Seems an excellent word to my mind to describe cleaning up old radios as in: 'It was all cobwebby inside, and when I'd removed all the cobwebbery, it came up like new again'. Can't think of a better word

'Cobwebby' is cetainly an adjective found in the OED, and cobweb - a word made from 'cob' and 'web' - is itself a very old word.

Cob (14C) is from 'coppe' meaning spider in Old English, related to Middle Dutch 'koppe' and Swedish dialect 'koppa'.

'Web' is from Old English 'webb' related to Old Saxon and Old High German 'webbi', and Old Norse 'vetr'.

How those cobwebbery old geezers who found their way here from foreign shores, bringing their words with them, would marvel if they could return and find that there's now a 'world wide web'!

Dribbled and waffled Yorkie.