Dictionary

attercop en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˈætəkɒp/ (UK)
• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

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”).

Meanings

1. (Northern-England, dialectal) A 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 157:
   • 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:
2. (Northern-England, dialectal) A peevish or ill-natured person.

Forms

Descendants

Attercopus