spider
UK /ˈspaɪ̯də/ · US /ˈspaɪ̯dɚ/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms spiders spidering spidered
- noun Any of various eight-legged, predatory arthropods, of the order Araneae, most of which spin webs to catch prey.
- noun (Internet) A program which follows links on the World Wide Web in order to gather information.
- noun (chiefly Australia and New Zealand) A float (drink) made by mixing ice-cream and a soda or fizzy drink (such as lemonade).
- noun (Australia, New Zealand, obsolete) An alcoholic drink made with brandy and lemonade or ginger beer.
- noun (slang) A spindly person.
- noun (slang) A man who persistently approaches or accosts a woman in a public social setting, particularly in a bar.
- noun (snooker, billiards) A stick with a convex arch-shaped notched head used to support the cue when the cue ball is out of reach at normal extension.
- noun (cooking, US, UK, chiefly historical and now dialectal) A cast-iron frying pan with three legs, once common in open-hearth cookery.
- verb (intransitive) To move like a spider.
- verb (intransitive) To cover a surface like a cobweb.
- verb (Internet, of a computer program) To follow links on the World Wide Web in order to gather information. “The online dictionary is regularly spidered by search engines.”
- proper noun The 29th sura (chapter) of the Qur'an.
Synonyms
attercop cop crawler bridge Big H boy brown sugar brown bujj diacetylmorphine diamorphine dog food dope dugee henry heroin horse H junk muck wanderer
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English spithre, spider, from Old English spīþra (“spider”), from Proto-West Germanic *spinþrijō, from Proto-Germanic *spinnaną (“to spin”). Mostly displaced attercop (“spider, unpleasant person”), now a dialectal term.
Compare typologically Proto-Slavic *mězgyrь (whence Russian мизги́рь (mizgírʹ)) (akin to Latvian mežģīt), Turkish örümcek (akin to örmek).
Webster’s 1913
- noun Any one of numerous species of arachnids comprising the order Araneina. Spiders have the mandibles converted into poison fangs, or falcers. The abdomen is large and not segmented, with two or three pairs of spinnerets near the end, by means of which they spin threads of silk to form cocoons, or nests, to protect their eggs and young.
- noun Any one of various other arachnids resembling the true spiders, especially certain mites, as the red spider (see under Red).
Etymology [OE. spi, fr. AS. spinnan to spin; -- so named from spinning its web; cf. D. spin a spider, G. spinne, Sw. spindel. Seee Spin.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “spider”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details