attercop

From Middle English attercoppe, from Old English ātorcoppe (“spider”), corresponding to atter (“poison, venom”) +‎ cop (“spider”). The latter is still to be found in the English word cobweb. Cognate to Danish edderkop (“spider”) and Norwegian edderkopp (“spider”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈætəkɒp/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

attercop (plural attercops)

1. (dialectal, Northern England) A spider.
   • 1924, Robert Graves, Attercop: the All-Wise Spider:

     Myself, not bound by James’ view / Nor Walter’s, in a vision saw these two / Like trapped and weakening flies / In toils of the same hoary net; / I seemed to hear ancestral cries / Buzzing ‘To our All-Wise, Omnivorous / Attercop glowering over us, / Whose table we have set / With blood and bones and sweat.’

   • 1937 September 21, J[ohn] R[onald] R[euel] Tolkien, “Flies and Spiders”, in The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again, revised edition, New York, N.Y.: Ballantine Books, published February 1966 (August 1967 printing), →OCLC, page 157:

     Old fat spider spinning in a tree! / Old fat spider can’t see me! / Attercop! Attercop! / Won’t you stop, / Stop your spinning and look for me?

2. (dialectal, Northern England) A peevish or ill-natured person.

• Translingual: Attercopus

• capretto, catopter

From Middle English attercoppe, from Old English ātorcoppe.

• IPA^(key): /ˌatiːˈkɔp/

attercop

1. spider

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 23