spidery

Adjective

spidery (comparative spiderier, superlative spideriest)

1. Like a spider.
   • “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
   • 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

   Synonyms:

   spideresque, spiderish, spiderlike

2. Characterized by many spindly extensions.
   • The spidery construction looked like it would fall apart in a stiff breeze.
   • This shelf is deeply cut into by rivers, so that the line has to cross a series of spidery lattice-girder bridges.1960 April, H. P. White, “The Railways of Sierra Leone”, in Railway Magazine, page 235
3. Suggestive of cobwebs; spiderweb-like.
4. Infested with or containing many spiders.
5. (figuratively) Cramped 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