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spider

Pronunciation: /ˈspaɪ̯də/

The English word “spider” has 20 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. Any of various eight-legged, predatory arthropods, of the order Araneae, most of which spin webs to catch prey.
  2. A program which follows links on the World Wide Web in order to gather information.
  3. A float (drink) made by mixing ice-cream and a soda or fizzy drink (such as lemonade).
  4. An alcoholic drink made with brandy and lemonade or ginger beer.
  5. A spindly person.
  6. A man who persistently approaches or accosts a woman in a public social setting, particularly in a bar.
  7. 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.
  8. A cast-iron frying pan with three legs, once common in open-hearth cookery.
  9. Implement for moving food in and out of hot oil for deep frying, with a circular metal mesh attached to a long handle; a spider skimmer
  10. A part of a crank, to which the chainrings are attached.
  11. Heroin.
  12. Part of a resonator instrument that transmits string vibrations from the bridge to a resonator cone at multiple points.
  13. A skeleton or frame with radiating arms or members, often connected by crosspieces, such as a casting forming the hub and spokes to which the rim of a fly wheel or large gear is bolted; the body of a piston head; or a frame for strengthening a core or mould for a casting.
  14. A soft-hackle fly.
  15. The network of wires separating the areas of a dartboard.
  16. A spider graph or spider tree.
  17. A type of light phaeton.
  18. A support for a camera tripod, preventing it from sliding.
  19. A competition in which several participants are spread evenly around the edges of the green, who all make one bowl towards the central jack at the same time; the winner being the person whose bowl ends up closest to the jack.
  20. A bit for turning fasteners with 8-pointed heads.

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).

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