Web
From Proto Indo European webh or wobh, “web”; also the ancestor of weave, waffle, wave, waver, and wobble. It came into Proto Germanic as webjan, and Old English as webb. Originally it referred only to woven fabric; the application to a spider’s trap did not appear until the 1200’s. The cob in cobweb is a clipping of an old word for spider, attorcoppe (cf. Tolkien’s use of it as “attercop” in The Hobbit), “poison head”; compare adder and cap. Web first appeared referring to the Internet in 1990.
The phonosemantics of web suggest an act of will (”w”) creating connections (short “e”), resulting in a burst of energy. This energy burst may refer to the combined strength of the new-woven material, or perhaps the spatial appearance of a web.
