spider

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   Any of various eight-legged, predatory arthropods, of the order Araneae, most of which spin webs to catch prey.

   Little Miss Muffet, She sat on a tuffet, Eating of curds and whey; There came a little spider, Who sat down beside her, And frighted Miss Muffet away.

2. 2
   noun

   A program which follows links on the World Wide Web in order to gather information.

   Crawler-based search engines have three major elements. The first is the spider, also called the crawler, which visits a web page, reads it, and then follows links to other pages within the site.

3. 3
   noun

   A float (drink) made by mixing ice-cream and a soda or fizzy drink (such as lemonade).

   2002, Katharine Gasparini, Cranberry and vanilla ice cream spider, recipe in Cool Food, page 339.

4. 4
   noun

   A cast-iron frying pan with three legs, once common in open-hearth cookery.

   Cut slices and lay them in cold water in the spider; boil them up two or three minutes, then pour off the water and set the spider again on the coals and brown the slices on each side.

5. 5
   noun

   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

   If you are deep-frying your falafel, use a spider or basket to place them gently into the hot oil, which should be preheated to a temperature of 175°C (330°F).

6. 6
   noun

   A type of light phaeton.

   I am also disappointed with the horses, having hardly seen a decent pair yet, while the traps and horses do not look smart and well groomed. There are a great many American spiders used. Have not seen a bullock in the yoke yet.

7. 7
   noun

   A support for a camera tripod, preventing it from sliding.

   The spider is very useful for shooting in the studio or on locations with smooth floors where tripod legs tend to slide.

8. 8
   verb

   To move like a spider.

   A year later she returned to El Cap and spidered up the wall again — this time in 23 hours.

Etymology

From Middle English spiþre, spydyr, spider, spiþer, 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).