attercop
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]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”).
Pronunciation
[edit]- IPA(key): /ˈætəkɒp/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
Noun
[edit]attercop (plural attercops)
- (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?
- (dialectal, Northern England) A peevish or ill-natured person.
Anagrams
[edit]Yola
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Middle English attercoppe, from Old English ātorcoppe.
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]attercop
References
[edit]- 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
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