The word cobweb​ was first used in 1323, when it was spelled coppe-webbe (the p became a b due to influence from cob, another word meaning "lump"). This hyphenated form reflects how the word was created: out of coppe, an archaic term for "spider", and web, which had the same meaning as today. Coppe was a clipping of a previous word for "spider", atorcoppe, and that literally meant "venom-head". The first part, ator, comes from a Proto-Germanic word meaning "ulcer", and the second part, coppe​, could also mean "summit" or "top". It hails from Proto-Germanic kuppaz, or "vault", and that ultimately derives from the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction gu, "to bend". Web experienced very little change throughout history, tracing to PIE webh, meaning "to weave".

The word chickpea was first used in the 1542 Bibliotheca Eliotae, which was one of the first major English language dictionaries. Then, it was spelled chiche pease, and on previous occasions it also took forms like ciche-peasen, chich pea, and chice peasen, among other alterations. I've explained the etymology of pea in the past, but I really want to get in depth with the chick part. It has nothing to do with fowl; in fact, it comes from the Old French word chiche, which also meant "chickpea" (so the pea part is entirely redundant). That's from Latin cicer, meaning "pea" in general, and probably ultimately derives from a Proto-Indo-European word sounding like kiker and meaning "pale". Chickpea as one word is more than ten times as used than with either a hyphen or a space, and it's about twice as used as ​garbanzo.

Apparently the fruit orange came before the color; before its introduction, people just called the hue geoluread, which translates to "yellow-red". The word was borrowed at the beginning of the fifteenth century from Anglo-Norman orenge, which, through Medieval Latin, is from Italian arancia. That traces to Arabic naranj, which goes back to Persian narang, and ultimately derives from Sanskrit narangas, referring to the tree (that has an unknown origin but is regarded as probably coming from a Dravidian language). You can see how the word traveled along with the fruit being traded, which is really interesting. Interesting side note: a lot of people say that nothing rhymes with orange, but the Oxford English Dictionary actually lists the rare word sporange as meaning "a receptacle containing spores", so that's not quite true.

The words gum meaning "flesh around the teeth" and "sticky thing you chew" are not related. The former, through Middle English gome, comes from the Old English word for "palate", goma, which eventually traces to Proto-Germanic gaumo and Proto-Indo-European ghumo. The other kind of gum you get from a plant has a much more interesting origin. It was borrowed from an Anglo-Norman word also spelled gome, which derives from a Latin word spelled either as cummi  or gummi. That in turn goes back to Ancient Greek kommi, still referring to the plant product, and ultimately is thought to be from the Egyptian word qmy, meaning "anointing oil". This obviously shifted in definition as the resin was traded around the Mediterranean and very likely hails from a Proto-Semitic root.

We take them for granted so often but what, really, are dashboards? The board part sort makes sense, but why dash​? The word traces to well before the automobile era began, in the 1840s, when it referred to a wooden barrier in front of horse-drawn carriages. It was meant to prevent the driver from being hit by mud being sprayed, or dashed up, by the horses' hooves. When cars were invented, this feature was retained at a different angle to protect passengers from the oil and heat of the invention. Eventually, people also realized it was convenient to put controls on automobile dashboards, so they did that, giving us the modern definition of the word. The origin of the verb dash is unknown but thought to be Scandinavian, and the word board comes from Proto-Germanic burdan and PIE berd, "to cut". I think it's pretty cool that a lot of people informally shorten dashboard to dash without realizing what that originally referred to.

One of my favorite pejorative adjectives is the word maladroit, which is synonymous with "clumsy". That's just the prefix mal-, which meant "bad" and comes from Latin malus (from Proto-Italic malo, from Proto-Indo-European mel, also "bad"), attached to the word adroit, meaning "dextrous" or "skillful". The term was borrowed from French, which put together the prefix a, here meaning "on the", and the root "droit", meaning "right". So someone who is maladroit is "bad on the right". That's right, we've found another etymological bias toward right-handedness, much like how we've seen sinister and gauche ultimately being associated with the left. Droit, through Old French, traces to Latin directus ("straight"; the etymon of direct), which is composed out of the prefix dis-, meaning "apart", and regere​, "to guide".