webbing

1. 1
   noununcountable

   A strong woven fabric made up into flat strips, used for straps, belts, and load-bearing supports.

   The climber trusted her weight to a few inches of nylon webbing.

   Cargo nets are built from interlocking webbing strong enough to hold heavy loads.

   Similarstrapping, tape

   Note

   Strips of woven material stretched taut to bear weight, as across the frame of a lawn chair. In most uses it is a mass noun: a length of nylon webbing, made from webbing. The plural webbings appears when different kinds or grades of the material are compared. The same material gives its name to the soldier's carrying harness.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   A belt and shoulder harness fitted with pouches, worn by a soldier to carry equipment, water, ammunition, and other gear.

   The recruits were issued new webbing at the start of basic training.

   His webbing was loaded with spare magazines and a field dressing.

   Similarharness

   Note

   Military speech treats belt, yoke and pouches as one item, so the word usually takes a singular verb with no article: his webbing was loaded, they were issued webbing. The kit carries ammunition, water, rations and tools and spreads their weight across the body. It is ordinary barracks vocabulary, so a civilian writing about soldiers can use it without explanation.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The folds of skin that stretch between the fingers or toes, as found between the digits of ducks, frogs, and other animals.

   Otters use the webbing on their feet to steer underwater.

   A bat's wing is supported by webbing stretched between its elongated finger bones.

   Similarmembrane

   Note

   Zoologists call this the interdigital membrane, and they tend to use web for a single fold and webbing for the whole spread. In aquatic animals it enlarges the foot into a paddle for swimming. In bats it does far more, forming the load-bearing surface of the wing itself.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The laced section of a baseball mitt spanning the gap between thumb and forefinger, where many catches are secured.

   The shortstop caught the grounder in the deep webbing of his glove.

   A torn lace left the webbing of the catcher's mitt hanging loose.

   Note

   Ballplayers use web and webbing interchangeably for the laced pocket of a glove, and the natural phrase is caught it in the webbing. Gloves are sold by their web pattern, such as closed, modified trapeze or H-web. Fielders choose a pattern to suit their position, so the word often comes up in talk about equipment as well as about plays.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   The system of tapes that carries continuous webs of paper through a printing press.

   An operator threaded fresh paper onto the webbing before the run began.

   Misaligned webbing left smears down one edge of every page.

   Note

   Press work has two related words that are easy to mix up. The web is the continuous ribbon of paper fed from a roll. The webbing is the set of tapes that carries that ribbon from one printing unit to the next. If the webbing slips, the press loses tension and registration, and the printed image falls out of alignment.

6. 6
   verb

   Present participle of web.

   The old spider kept webbing the rafters throughout the summer.

   Thin cracks were webbing across the dry riverbed under the heat.

   Note

   The verb doubles its final consonant before the suffix, as short verbs ending in a single consonant usually do: web, webbing, webbed. It can be intransitive, as when a spider is webbing, or transitive, as in webbing a corner or a victim. The spelling matches the strap fabric, so context decides whether the word is an action or a thing.

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