Word Finder - spiders

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Any of various eight-legged, predatory arthropods, of the order Araneae, most of which spin webs to catch prey.

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A program which follows links on the World Wide Web in order to gather information.

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A float (drink) made by mixing ice-cream and a soda or fizzy drink (such as lemonade).

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2002, Katharine Gasparini, Cranberry and vanilla ice cream spider, recipe in Cool Food, page 339.

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An alcoholic drink made with brandy and lemonade or ginger beer.

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A spindly person.

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A man who persistently approaches or accosts a woman in a public social setting, particularly in a bar.

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A stick with a convex arch-shaped notched head used to support the cue when the cue ball is out of reach at normal extension; a bridge.

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A cast-iron frying pan with three legs, once common in open-hearth cookery.

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Implement for moving food in and out of hot oil for deep frying, with a circular metal mesh attached to a long handle; a spider skimmer

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A part of a crank, to which the chainrings are attached.

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Heroin (street drug).

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Part of a resonator instrument that transmits string vibrations from the bridge to a resonator cone at multiple points.

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A skeleton or frame with radiating arms or members, often connected by crosspieces, such as a casting forming the hub and spokes to which the rim of a fly wheel or large gear is bolted; the body of a piston head; or a frame for strengthening a core or mould for a casting.

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(fly fishing) a soft-hackle fly

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The network of wires separating the areas of a dartboard

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A spider graph or spider tree

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A type of light phaeton.

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To move like a spider.

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To cover a surface like a cobweb.

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(of a computer program) To follow links on the World Wide Web in order to gather information.

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The online dictionary is regularly spidered by search engines.

She shuddered and asked again, "Are there more spiders on the planet?"

A kid who stole matches so he could light spiders on fire and watch how far they ran.

She's a good cook, but she's afraid of spiders, and she always loses things.

Kiera was bound to be traumatized until she saw for herself there were no monster-sized spiders on Romas's home planet.

Although there is no direct genetic affinity between the spiders of these two groups, an interesting parallelism in their habits may be traced.

Perhaps, if Romas kept the spiders away and Evelyn could make the days pass quickly, she might survive her visit.

He'll protect you from the bad people and spiders.

So I'm going to be stuck on a planet far away without a bus ticket home surrounded by spiders the size of basketballs and being bossed around by Neanderthal barbarians who forbid me to talk and lock me in the bathroom!

And if there were more of those monstrous spiders on board, she probably did not want to wander around opening doors at random.

If an aperture for ingress and egress, for purposes of feeding, were left in the wall of such a chamber, there would arise in a rudimentary form what is known as the tubular nest or web; and the next important step was possibly the adoption of such a nest as a permanent abode for the spider., Some spiders, like the Drassidae and Salticidae, have not advanced beyond this stage in architectural industry; but next to the cocoon this simple tubular retreat - whether spun in a crevice or burrow or simply attached to the lower side of a stone - is the most constant feature to be observed in the spinning habits of spiders.

Its whereabouts is thus, to a great extent, concealed both from enemies searching for spiders and from insects suitable for food; and its open meshwork of strong threads makes it much less liable to be beaten down by rain or torn to shreds by winds than if it were a flat sheet of closely woven silk.

In my dream … the aliens … took me … to a planet ruled by spiders!

The only thing that seemed to click was Evelyn's insistence that there were no spiders.

Can you think of anything else but spiders?

Except in the extreme north and south, and on the tops of the highest mountains, where there is no insect life as food supply, spiders are found all over the world, even in isolated oceanic islands.

There is no doubt that the primary influence that has guided the evolution of the architecture of the burrowing spiders has been that great necessity for the preservation of life, avoidance of enemies and protection from adverse physical conditions like rain, cold or drought.

Snares of another type consisting of a tangled mass of threads amongst which the spiders pick their way with ease, but which are impassable to insects, are spun by members of the Theridiidae and Pholcidae; but by common consent the so-called orbicular web, so characteristic of the Argyopidae but by no means confined to them, is regarded as manifesting the greatest perfection of instinct in snare-spinning.

By trailing a thread behind them spiders are able to drop from any height to the ground and to retrace their steps with certainty to a particular spot.

The possession of silk-glands has also profoundly influenced the geographical distribution of spiders and has enabled them to cross arms of the sea and establish themselves on isolated oceanic islands which most of the orders of Arachnida are unable to reach.

This is effected by the so-called habit of "ballooning" practised by very young spiders, which float through the air, often at great altitudes, in the direction of the prevalent winds.

As a commercial product spider-silk has been found to be equal, if not superior, to the best silk spun by lepidopterous larvae; but the cannibalistic propensities of spiders, making it impossible to keep more than one in a single receptacle, coupled with the difficulty of getting them to spin freely in a confined space, have hitherto prevented the silk being used on any extensive scale for textile fabrics.

The methods of catching prey adopted by spiders are extremely varied.

Spiders which spin no snare are dependent for capturing prey for the most part upon their quickness or powers of lying concealed.

All spiders are oviparous.

The number of eggs produced at a time varies enormously according to the species, from about half a dozen, more or less, in some ant-mimicking Attidae or jumping spiders to many hundreds in the larger orbicular-webbed spiders of the family Argyopidae.

As a rule terrestrial spiders guard the cocoon in the permanent burrow, as in the trap-door spiders, or in the silken retreat which acts as a temporary nursery, as in the Salticidae.

In these spiders, too, the newly-hatched young shift for themselves as soon as they emerge from the cocoon; in others that guard the cocoon the young stay for a longer or shorter time under their mother's protection, those of the wandering Lycosidae climbing on her back to be carried about with her wherever she goes.

Species of other families (Lycosidae, Clubionidae) may live for a few seasons, hibernating in the soil or amongst dead leaves; and examples of the larger spiders (Aviculariidae) have been kept alive in captivity for several years.

Other webspinning spiders (Tegenaria) have somewhat similar habits; and the male of the park-web spider (Atypus), one of the Mygalomorphae, taps the walls of the tubular web of the female before daring to bite a hole in it and descend into her burrow.

Most curious of all is the courtship of the males of some species of Salticidae, or jumping spiders, which are decorated with plumes or coloured stripes or iridescent patches.

All spiders possess a pair of poison-glands, one in each of the chelicerae or mandibles and opening by means of a duct at the tip of the fang.

Many of the species of these spiders, moreover, are very conspicuously coloured, being either wholly black or black relieved by fiery red spots, forcibly suggesting that they are warningly coloured.

So far as is known, however, only the large spiders belonging to this group possess this special means of defence, and in many other species this is accompanied by highly-developed stridulating organs resembling those of rattlesnakes and scorpions in function.

Others again, like Gasteracantha and Acrosoma, belonging to the Argyopidae, are armed with sharp and strong abdominal spines, and these spiders are hard-shelled like beetles and are spotted with black on a reddish or yellow ground, their spines shining with steel-blue lustre.

The majority of spiders, however, are soft-skinned and succulent, and are tasty morsels for insectivorous reptiles, birds and mammals.

Spiders of various families will, when alarmed, lie absolutely still with legs tucked up and allow themselves to be pushed and rolled, and handled in various ways without betraying that they are alive by the slightest movement.

The extent to which procryptic coloration and instincts favouring concealment are developed indicates that generation after generation spiders have been subjected to persecution from enemies.

No doubt large numbers are devoured by insectivorous birds, mammals and reptiles, but the mortality due to them and other foes sinks into insignificance beside that caused by the persecution of hymenopterous insects of the families Ichneumonidae and Pompilidae, especially of the latter, many species of which systematically ransack the country for spiders wherewith to feed their young in the breeding season.

It is no exaggeration to say that countless thousands of spiders of all families are annually destroyed by these insects, and there is no reason to doubt that destruction on at least as great a scale has been going on for centuries, too many even to guess at.

Hence it is probable that no factor has had a greater influence than these wasps in moulding the protective instincts and habits of spiders.

In several families of spiders, but principally in those like the Clubionidae and Salticidae, which are terrestrial in habits, there are species which not only live amongst ants, but so closely resemble them in their shape, size, colour and actions that it requires a practised eye to distinguish the Arachnid from the insect.

Now the Pompilidae or mason wasps provision their cells with insects of many different kinds, as well as with spiders; but, of the hundreds of species of these wasps that have been described from different parts of the world, only one is known to use ants for this purpose; and this species is not one that preys upon spiders.

So, too, does it appear that ants are entirely immune to the attacks of Ichneumonidae, which destroy hosts of other insects and of spiders by laying their eggs upon their bodies.

But since ants are not persecuted by these two families of Hymenoptera, the greatest enemies spiders have to contend with, it is evident that mimicry of ants is of supreme advantage to spiders.

Ants, however, are not the only animals mimicked by spiders.

The exact extent, however, to which each particular class of enemy has affected the protective habits and attributes of spiders is by no means always evident; and it is impossible to discuss the question in detail within the limits of a short article.

As the tide rises the spiders take refuge in crevices and spin over their retreat a sheet of silk, impervious to water, beneath which they oie in safety with a supply of air until the ebb exposes the site again to the sun.

The habits of certain other spiders suggest the origin of the perfect adaptation to aquatic conditions exhibited by Desis and Argyroneta.

The nature of the integument and its hairy clothing in all spiders enables them to be plunged under water and withdrawn perfectly dry, and many species, even as large as the common English house-spider (Tegenaria), are so lightly built that they can run with speed over the surface of standing water, and this faculty has been perfected in genera like Pirata, Dolomedes and Triclaria, which are always found in the vicinity of lakes or on the edges of rivers and streams, readily taking to the water or running down the stems of water plants beneath its surface when pursued.

Geologically, spiders date from the Carboniferous Period, Arthrolycosa and others from the coal beds of Europe and North America being closely allied to the existing genus Liphistius.