Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A spider.
- n. Figuratively, a peevish, testy, ill-natured person.
Wiktionary
- n. A spider.
- n. A peevish or ill-natured person.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A spider.
- n. A peevish, ill-natured person.
Examples
“Not yet on the list but I must borrow / buy: The Ring of Words, by three senior editors of the OED, who talk about Tolkien's contributions to the Dictionary and rather more interestingly to me about certain individual words used in Tolkien's fiction attercop, hobbit, Smeagol, and more.”
“In my native Lancashire dialect an attercop is a spider: it can be found in modern Danish also as edderkop.”
“a spider an ‘attercop’ -- a word, by the way, still in popular use in the”
Lists
‘attercop’ hasn't been added to any lists yet.
violet_sphinx According to "The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary", the suffix "-cop" actually just means "spider" in Old English and is a divergent form related to "cob", as in the compound word "cobweb" - literally "spider web" - which dates as far back as 1300.
Tolkien also uses "attercop" in his poem "Errantry" in the lovely alliterative lines,
"...tarried for a little while
in little isles, and plundered them;
and webs of all the attercops
he shattered them and sundered them." Jan 16, 2011
gregmiller A peevish ill-natured person (used in northern Yorkshire); spider (from old english - it's also used in the Hobbit. In old english "attor" means poison and "cop" means head. In modern Norwegian a spider is called edderkopp) Dec 23, 2008