Meanings
-
1
noun
A small eight-legged creature that spins webs to catch insects.
A spider had built a web across the corner of the window.
-
2
noun
A program that automatically follows links across the web to collect information.
Search engines use a spider to discover and index new web pages.
Thesaurus
Synonyms
1
noun
· a small eight-legged...
attercop
2
noun
· a program that...
crawler
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).
*(s)penh₁-
Proto-Indo-European
spiþre
Middle English
spīþra
Old English
*spinþrijō
Proto-West Germanic
*spinnaną
Proto-Germanic
View etymology graph ->