Spider Definition

spīdər

spiders

noun

spiders

Any of an order (Araneae) of small, chiefly land arachnids having a body composed of a cephalothorax bearing the legs and an abdomen bearing two or more pairs of spinnerets that spin the silk threads from which are made nests, cocoons for the eggs, or webs for trapping insects.

Webster's New World

One that resembles a spider, as in appearance, character, or movement.

American Heritage

A cast-iron frying pan, originally one with legs for use on a hearth.

Webster's New World

Any of various devices or frameworks with several leglike extensions.

Webster's New World

A program that automatically retrieves webpages and follows the links on them to retrieve more webpages. Spiders are used by search engines to retrieve publicly accessible webpages for indexing, and they can also be used to check for links to webpages that no longer exist.

American Heritage

Synonyms:

Synonyms:
wanderer

verb

(Internet, of a computer program) To follow links on the World Wide Web in order to gather information.

The online dictionary is regularly spidered by search engines.

Wiktionary

Other Word Forms of Spider

Noun

Singular:

spider

Plural:

spiders

Origin of Spider

From Middle English spithre, from Old English spÄ«der, spīþra (“spider"), from Proto-Germanic *spinþrô (“spider", literally, "spinner"), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pend-, *(s)pen- (“to pull, stretch, spin"). Cognate with Scots spider (“spider"), West Frisian spin (“spider"), Dutch spin (“spider"), German Spinne (“spider"), Danish spinder (“spinner, spider"), Swedish spindel (“spider"). More at spin.

From Wiktionary
Middle English spither from Old English spīthra (s)pen- in Indo-European roots

From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition