Meanings
plural attercops
- Northern EnglanddialectalA spider.
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?
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 1571 more example
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.’
1924, Robert Graves, Attercop: the All-Wise Spider - Northern EnglanddialectalA peevish or ill-natured person.
Synonyms & antonyms
Origin
- Old Englishātorcoppe“spider”
- Middle Englishattercoppe
- Englishattercop
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”).
More words from Middle English, Old English
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
attercop. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/attercop
“attercop.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/attercop. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “attercop,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/attercop.
Source: attercop on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.