Etymology

spider

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Today it means: Any of various eight-legged, predatory arthropods, of the order Araneae, most of which spin webs to catch prey. Full definition →

Middle English spithre ← Old English spīþra ← Proto-West Germanic *spinþrijō
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The story

  1. Proto-Germanic · derived from*spinnaną“to spin”
  2. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*spinþrijō
  3. Old English · inherited fromspīþra“spider”
  4. Middle English · inherited fromspithre
  5. English todayspider

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).

Words from the same roots

Proto-Germanic*spinnaną all →

spinspan

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.