spider

Meanings

Noun

• Any of various eight-legged, predatory arthropods, of the order Araneae, most of which spin webs to catch prey.
• A program which follows links on the World Wide Web in order to gather information.
• A float made by mixing ice-cream and a soda or fizzy drink (such as lemonade).
• An alcoholic drink made with brandy and lemonade or ginger beer.
• A spindly person.
• A man who persistently approaches or accosts a woman in a public social setting, particularly in a bar.
• 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; a bridge.
• A cast-iron frying pan with three legs, once common in open-hearth cookery.
• 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
• A part of a crank, to which the chainrings are attached.
• Heroin.
• Part of a resonator instrument that transmits string vibrations from the bridge to a resonator cone at multiple points.
• 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.
• a soft-hackle fly
• The network of wires separating the areas of a dartboard
• A spider graph or spider tree
• A type of light phaeton.
• A support for a camera tripod, preventing it from sliding.

Verb

• To move like a spider.
• To cover a surface like a cobweb.
• To follow links on the World Wide Web in order to gather information.

Related

Similar words

• attercop ; cop

Origin

• From Middle English spiþre, spydyr, spider, spiþer, from Old English spīþra, from Proto-West Germanic *spinþrō, from Proto-Germanic *spinnaną ("to spin"). Mostly displaced attercop, now a dialectal term.