| / English Dictionary |
SPIDER
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Predatory arachnid with eight legs, two poison fangs, two feelers, and usually two silk-spinning organs at the back end of the body; they spin silk to make cocoons for eggs or traps for prey
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("spider" is a kind of...):
arachnid; arachnoid (air-breathing arthropods characterized by simple eyes and four pairs of legs)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "spider"):
orb-weaving spider (a spider that spins a circular (or near circular) web)
Argiope aurantia; black and gold garden spider (a widely distributed North American garden spider)
Araneus cavaticus; barn spider (an orange and tan spider with darkly banded legs that spins an orb web daily)
Aranea diademata; garden spider (a spider common in European gardens)
comb-footed spider; theridiid (spider having a comb-like row of bristles on each hind foot)
black widow; Latrodectus mactans (venomous New World spider; the female is black with an hourglass-shaped red mark on the underside of the abdomen)
tarantula (large hairy tropical spider with fangs that can inflict painful but not highly venomous bites)
hunting spider; wolf spider (ground spider that hunts its prey instead of using a web)
trap-door spider (American spider that constructs a silk-lined nest with a hinged lid)
Holonyms ("spider" is a member of...):
Araneae; Araneida; order Araneae; order Araneida (spiders)
Derivation:
spidery (relating to or resembling a member of the class Arachnida)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A skillet made of cast iron
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("spider" is a kind of...):
frying pan; frypan; skillet (a pan used for frying foods)
Sense 3
Meaning:
A computer program that prowls the internet looking for publicly accessible resources that can be added to a database; the database can then be searched with a search engine
Synonyms:
spider; wanderer
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("spider" is a kind of...):
computer program; computer programme; program; programme ((computer science) a sequence of instructions that a computer can interpret and execute)
Context examples:
Examples of common phobias include fear of spiders, flying in an airplane, elevators, heights, enclosed rooms, crowded public places, and embarrassing oneself in front of other people.
(Phobia, NCI Dictionary)
I found myself in the condition of a schoolmaster, a trap, a pitfall; of always playing spider to Dora's fly, and always pouncing out of my hole to her infinite disturbance.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Often it was only the smallest trace, Watson, the faintest indication, and yet it was enough to tell me that the great malignant brain was there, as the gentlest tremors of the edges of the web remind one of the foul spider which lurks in the centre.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
There is a patience of the wild—dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself—that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience belongs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food; and it belonged to Buck as he clung to the flank of the herd, retarding its march, irritating the young bulls, worrying the cows with their half-grown calves, and driving the wounded bull mad with helpless rage.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
His means of taming is simple, for already the spiders have diminished.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
It squirmed about, like some huge many-legged spider, and swayed back and forth to the regular roll of the vessel.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
It is a most tremendous monster, like a great spider, with a body as big as an elephant and legs as long as a tree trunk.
(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)
I suspect that the real attraction was a large library of fine books, which was left to dust and spiders since Uncle March died.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Georges, and Louises, doubloons and double guineas and moidores and sequins, the pictures of all the kings of Europe for the last hundred years, strange Oriental pieces stamped with what looked like wisps of string or bits of spider's web, round pieces and square pieces, and pieces bored through the middle, as if to wear them round your neck—nearly every variety of money in the world must, I think, have found a place in that collection; and for number, I am sure they were like autumn leaves, so that my back ached with stooping and my fingers with sorting them out.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
Researchers took a strain of the fungus Metarhizium pingshaense, which infects mosquitoes in the wild, and genetically modified it to produce a toxin found in the venom of the Australian Blue Mountains funnel-web spider.
(Genetically modified fungus hailed as malaria breakthrough, SciDev.Net)
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