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harvestman

The English word “harvestman” has 2 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A male harvester; any harvester (person who works to gather in the crops at harvest time).
  2. An order of terrestrial, non-venomous arachnids with often very long legs: Opiliones; any individual of this order.

Etymology

From harvest + -man. (sense 2): There are various hypotheses and folk etymologies for why the arachnids are called harvestmen, but the most likely explanation is the shape of their legs, which resemble sickles or scythes. More information The association with harvesting or haymaking is found across Europe; compare words for “harvest spider” in other languages: Dutch hooiwagen (literally…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.