web

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A woven fabric, especially one on a loom or just removed from it.
• noun The structural part of cloth.
• noun A latticed or woven structure.
• noun A structure of delicate, threadlike filaments characteristically spun by spiders or certain insect larvae.
• noun Something intricately contrived, especially something that ensnares or entangles.
• noun A complex, interconnected structure or arrangement.
• noun The World Wide Web.
• noun A radio or television network.
• noun A membrane or fold of skin connecting the toes, as of certain amphibians, birds, and mammals.
• noun The barbs on each side of the shaft of a bird's feather; a vane.
• noun Baseball A piece of leather or leather mesh that fills the space between the thumb and forefinger of a baseball glove.
• noun Architecture A space or compartment between the ribs or groins of a vault.
• noun A metal sheet or plate connecting the heavier sections, ribs, or flanges of a structural element.
• noun A thin metal plate or strip, as the bit of a key or the blade of a saw.
• noun A large continuous roll of paper, such as newsprint, either in the process of manufacture or as it is fed into a web press.
• transitive verb To provide with a web.
• transitive verb To cover or envelop with a web.
• transitive verb To ensnare in a web.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun That which is woven; a woven fabric; specifically, a whole piece of cloth in course of being woven, or after it comes from the loom.
• noun Same as webbing, 1.
• noun The warp in a loom.
• noun Something resembling a web or sheet of cloth; specifically, a large roll of paper such as is used in the web-press for news papers.
• noun Any one of various thin and broad objects, probably so named from some similarity to the thin, broad fabric of the loom.
• noun The blade of a sword.
• noun The blade of a saw.
• noun The plate (or its equivalent) in a beam or girder which connects the upper and lower fiat or laterally extending plates.
• noun The corresponding part of a rail, between the tread and the foot. See cut under rail.
• noun The flat part of a wheel, between the nave and the rim, as in some railway-wheels—occupying the space where spokes would be in an ordinary wheel.
• noun The solid part of the bit of a key.
• noun The part of an anvil below the head, which is of reduced size.
• noun The thin, sharp part of the colter of a plow. See cut under plow.
• noun A canvas cloth used in a saddle.
• noun The basketwork of a gabion. See cut under gabion.
• noun In a vehicle, a combination of bands or straps of a stout fabric, serving to keep the hood from opening too far.
• noun The arm of a crank.
• noun In ornithology, the blade, standard, vane, or vexillum of a feather: so called from the texture acquired through the weaving or interlocking of the barbs by the barbules with their barbicels and hooklets.
• noun The plexus of very delicate threads or filaments which a spider spins, and which serves as a net to catch flies or other insects for its food; a cobweb; also, a similar substance spun and woven into a sort of fabric by many insects, usually as a covering or protection. See bag-worm, web-worm, and tent-caterpillar.
• noun Figuratively, anything carefully contrived and elaborately put together or woven; a plot; a scheme.
• noun In anatomy, a connective or other tissue; any open structure composed of fibers and membranes running into each other irregularly as if tangled, and serving to support fat or other soft substances. See tissue and histology.
• noun In zoology, the membrane or fold of skin which connects the digits of any animal; especially, that which connects the toes of a bird or a quadruped, making the animal palmiped, and the foot itself palmate, as occurs in nearly all aquatic birds (hence called web-footed), and in many aquatic mammals, as the beaver, the muskrat, and ornithorhynchus. Webs sometimes occur as a congenital defect of the human fingers or toes. The relatively largest webs are those of the bats' wings. In birds the extent and special character of the webs (technically called palamæ) are taken into some account in classification, and some conditions of the webs receive special names. See web-footed, and cuts under bat, duckbill, flying-frog, Œdemia, otary, palmate, semipalmate, and totipalmate.
• noun In coal-mining, the face or wall of a long-wall stall in course of being holed and broken down for removal.
• To cover with or as with a web; envelop.
• To connect with a web, as the toes of a bird; render palmate.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb To unite or surround with a web, or as if with a web; to envelop; to entangle.
• noun obsolete A weaver.
• noun That which is woven; a texture; textile fabric; esp., something woven in a loom.
• noun A whole piece of linen cloth as woven.
• noun The texture of very fine thread spun by a spider for catching insects at its prey; a cobweb.
• noun Fig.: Tissue; texture; complicated fabrication.