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”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈætəkɒp/

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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, The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again, 3rd edition, London: Unwin Books, George Allen & Unwin, published 1966 (1970 printing), →ISBN, page 147:

     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.

• 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