Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In zoology, a class name used with varying signification.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun plural (Zoöl.) One of the classes of Arthropoda. See Illustration in Appendix.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a large class of arthropods including spiders and ticks and scorpions and daddy longlegs; have four pairs of walking legs and no wings

Etymologies

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Examples

  • He hated that sly, double-dealing reptile of prey — the arachnida of social nature — the spiders with which also naturalists place the scorpions.

    Wylder's Hand 2003

  • Indeed spiders and scorpions and their relatives of the group arachnida prove for similar reasons to be derivatives of the same original stock, and own cousins of the insects.

    The Doctrine of Evolution Its Basis and Its Scope Henry Edward Crampton

  • On examining it I found that it was a great crab-spider, one of the formidable _arachnida_, which are said to eat young birds and other small vertebrates, though they generally, like other spiders, live upon insects.

    On the Banks of the Amazon William Henry Giles Kingston 1847

  • He hated that sly, double-dealing reptile of prey -- the arachnida of social nature -- the spiders with which also naturalists place the scorpions.

    Wylder's Hand Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu 1843

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