daddy-longlegs

• “It was especially concerned about miserable summers that were making life difficult for creatures from craneflies or daddy-longlegs to species of butterflies, members of the tit family and bats.”

  The Guardian: British wildlife benefits from return to 'traditional' seasonal weather

• “One of those daddy-longlegs arms came at me and I slipped it, but it just kept unfolding.”

  Simon & Schuster: Becoming the Natural

• “He can watch a ladybug make its way across the driveway for half an hour, happily play with a daddy-longlegs spider until the spider (usually missing at least one long leg by this point) escapes, examine with awe the trail of ants marching up our ash tree.”

  Archive 2005-10-01

• “An old reprobate daddy-longlegs, who has never said his prayers”

  The History of Pendennis

• “Lucy jumped if a daddy-longlegs walked within a yard of her, and everyone knew that daddy-longlegs were about as scary as Puff the Magic Dragon.”

  Simon & Schuster: Second Glance

• “Groping under the couch with one arm, a complex network of cobwebs is disturbed, sending a family of daddy-longlegs scampering.”

  Simon & Schuster: ME MYSELF I

• “The first shoal of gnats, mosquitoes, and lady-birds, which Geronimo ignored, was very soon followed by the daddy-longlegs, the lacewing flies, the smaller moths, and some of the more robust beetles.”

  My Family and Other Animals

• “In Ireland "dapping" with the green drake or the daddy-longlegs is practised from boats on most of the big loughs.”

  Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1

• “As no one appeared but an inquisitive daddy-longlegs, who examined her work with interest, she went to walk, got caught in a shower, and came home dripping.”

  Little Women

• “Hogarth here saying: "There you have a menagerie of gnome-land: observe those two black beetles, sedately nodding; and there is daddy-longlegs, working his legs gymnastically; and the three pairs of gallant grey stallions, galloping grandly neck to neck; and those two ridiculous beings, rubbing their palms together, round and round: each preoccupied, comically solemn, busied about its own quaint affairs -- like a varied gnomeland".”

  The Lord of the Sea

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