How does the word for an eight-legged created in Norwegian connect to modern technology? I recently learned the Norwegian word edderkopp (indefinite plural edderkopper), which means “spider.” I was intrigued because the Norwegian and English words for the same creature are so different. The English spider comes from Old English spiðra, which is a cognate of the Danish spinder, both of which etymologically mean “spinner.” A spider is a creature that spins a web; a spider is a spinner.
Looking into the etymology of the Norwegian edderkopp, I learned that the word comes from the Danish edderkop. Surprisingly, the formation is identical to the English attercop, which is a compound of atter meaning “poison, venom” and cop meaning “spider” but literally meaning “head; top, summit.” An attercop is literally a “venom head,” which refers to the poisonous bite of the spider. A spider is quite literally a “venom head.”
But what about that attercop? I learned that attercop is a dialtectical word nowadays, used mainly in Northern England. The word also refers to an ill-natured person, which is an example of a figurative use of the word. The word spider has a similarly expanded usage for people. Calling someone a spider is calling them an evil person who lures others with trickery, kind of like how a spider lures bugs into its web. The words attercop (as atorcoppe) and spider (as spiðra) both existed in Old English just as both continue to exist in Modern English. Likewise, contemporary Danish has both spinder and edderkop.
While English attercop is dialectical nowadays, the cop element survives in the modern cobweb. The <b> spelling comes from the 16th century, perhaps influenced by cob. J.R.R. Tolkien used both attercop and cob to mean “spider” the chapter “Flies and Spiders” in The Hobbit in 1937:
Old fat spider spinning in a tree!
Old fat spider can’t see me!
Attercop! Attercop!
Won’t you stop,
Stop your spinning and look for me?
Old Tomnoddy, all big body,
Old Tomnoddy can’t spy me!
Attercop! Attercop!
Down you drop!
You’ll never catch me up your tree!
Lazy Lob and crazy Cob
are weaving webs to wind me.
I am far more sweet than other meat,
but still they cannot find me!
Here am I, naughty little fly;
you are fat and lazy.
You cannot trap me, though you try,
in your cobwebs crazy.
The contemporary cobweb is a compound of cob meaning “spider” and web meaning “woven work.” Web comes from Old English webb, which is related to weave. The word web has expanded in meaning in modern times as a shortening of World Wide Web, referring to the linked information system of the internet. The word web continues to compound (spiderweb, webpage, website, webhead) and blend (webinar, webisode, webzine) to denote interconnected things and ideas. Modern web, by extension of the woven structure created by a spider, refers to any interconnected set of things.
From edderkopp in Norwegian to spiderwebs and the World Wide Web in English, language connects us all.
