spider
English · Français · Italiano · Thesaurus
AI In plain words
Writing a short explanation…
Written by a house AI from the entry below, in your language. The entry itself is the source.
spider¹
- /ˈspaɪ̯də/ UK
- /ˈspaɪ̯dɚ/ US
- [ˈspʌɪ̯ɾə(ɹ)] Canada, Eastern, Inland Northern American
Sounds like Spyder · Rhymes with -aɪdə(ɹ)
Where it comes from
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).
noun spiders
- 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.
-
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.
Similar: crawler
- 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.
- 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.
Similar: bridge
- 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.
- 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).
- A part of a crank, to which the chainrings are attached.
-
Heroin.
Similar: Big H, boy, brown sugar, brown, bujj, diacetylmorphine, diamorphine, dog food, dope, dugee, henry, 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. 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.
- 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.
- 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.
-
A bit for turning fasteners with 8-pointed heads.
Similar: double square, 8-point star
verb spiders · spidering · spidered
- To move like a spider. A year later she returned to El Cap and spidered up the wall again — this time in 23 hours.
- To cover a surface like a cobweb. High walls surrounded it on all sides, each one covered with the skeletal stems of climbing plants that spidered across the stones, and the ground was cobbled between patches of frozen grass.
- To follow links on the World Wide Web in order to gather information. The online dictionary is regularly spidered by search engines.
Spider²
proper noun
- The 29th sura (chapter) of the Qur'an.
Thesaurus
Closest in meaning: web, chandelier, bitsy, daddy, immobilizer, wide, robot, angiomas, angiomata, spider-man, huntsman, arachnid, orb-weaver, araneid, araneae, tarantula
Translations
Every language
noun arthropod
| Español | araña |
|---|---|
| 한국어 | 거미 geomi, 지주 jiju |
| 日本語 | 蜘蛛 kumo, クモ kumo, スパイダー supaidā |
| 中文 | 蜘蛛 zhīzhū, 蛛蛛 zhūzhu |
| हिन्दी | मकड़ी makṛī, मकड़ा makṛā |
| Kiswahili | buibui |
| Português | aranha |
| Français | araignée |
| Deutsch | Spinne |
| Italiano | ragno |
| Ελληνικά | αράχνη aráchni |
| Română | păianjen |
| Русский | пау́к paúk |
| Tiếng Việt | nhện, nhền nhện |
| العربية | عَنْكَبُوت ʕankabūt, شَبَث šabaṯ |
| עברית | עַכָּבִישׁ akavísh |
noun slang: a spindly person
| Ελληνικά | αράχνη aráchni |
|---|
noun snooker, billiards
| Français | araignée |
|---|
name 29th sura of the Qur'an
| العربية | سورة العنكبوت |
|---|
Talk about this word "spider." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/spider. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026. spider. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/spider "spider." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/spider.Cite this
@misc{spider_2026,
title = {spider},
howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
year = {2026},
url = {https://micwyn.com/word/spider},
urldate = {2026-11-06}
}
