attercop
/ˈætəkɒp/
attercop noun: a spider.
Noun
attercop (plural attercops)
- A 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...1924, Robert Graves, Attercop: the All-Wise 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...
- A peevish or ill-natured person.
Forms of attercop
| plural | attercops |
|---|
Origin of 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”) and Norwegian edderkopp (“spider”).
Questions about attercop
- What does attercop mean?
- Attercop means a spider.
- What part of speech is attercop?
- Attercop is a noun.
- How do you pronounce attercop?
- Attercop is pronounced /ˈætəkɒp/ (UK).
- What is the plural of attercop?
- The plural of attercop is attercops.
Words near attercop in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: attercop (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-attercop.wav.
Cite this entry: “attercop.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/attercop. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.