spidery

comparative spiderier · superlative spideriest

1. Like a spider.

   High up on the viaduct, and approached by a spidery staircase from the street, it looks down on Southwark Cathedral.

   1948 March and April, “A Keypoint in an Intensive Service”, in Railway Magazine, page 115

   1 more example

   “En passant,” if nothing else, would have revealed to Joe, in this imitation of a better trick, the hand of Eugene. […] “Sometimes,” said Eskew, “I think that ’Gene Bantry is jest a leetle bit spiderier than he is lazy.[…]”

   1905 October, Booth Tarkington, “‘Outer Darkness’”, in The Conquest of Canaan: A Novel, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC, pages 128–129

   Synonyms: spideresque, spiderish, spiderlike

2. Characterized by many spindly extensions.

   The spidery construction looked like it would fall apart in a stiff breeze.

   2 more examples

   This shelf is deeply cut into by rivers, so that the line has to cross a series of spidery lattice-girder bridges.

   1960 April 28, H. P. White, “The Railways of Sierra Leone”, in Railway Magazine, page 235

   At one point, her spidery abstractions gave way to a series of abruptly syncopated hits, like a deranged allusion to the Thelonious Monk tune “Evidence.”

   2015 June 18, Nate Chinen, “Review: Eric Revis Trio Lets the Music Lead the Way at the Jazz Gallery”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 16 Jun 2022

3. Suggestive of cobwebs; spiderweb-like.
4. Infested with or containing many spiders.
5. figurativelycommunicationsCramped or illegible; especially when spiky.

   'I cannot make head or tail of it,' confessed Miss Barrowford, as the senseful fingers crossed and recrossed the scrawl, now following a vague spidery line, now drawn where no visible mark appeared to lead. 'Is there any meaning, do you think?'

   1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries