a. [f. SPIDER sb. + -Y.]
Cotgrave (1611) has ‘Araignier, spiderie,’ but the word otherwise belongs to the 19th century.
1. Like a spider in appearance or form.
1837. New Monthly Mag., LI. 365. That grotesque race, the Sapajous. They are slender, mild in disposition, flat in face, long in tail, and spidery in general appearance.
1859. Ld. Lytton, Wanderer (ed. 2), 21. Spidery Saturn in his webs of fire.
1881. J. W. Ogle, Harveian Orat., 93. That hideous spidery crustacean, the crab.
Comb. 1882. Garden, 25 March, 194/3. A bright spidery-looking flower.
b. fig. Entangling like a spider.
1875. M. Collins, Sweet & Twenty, III. II. vii. 19. Lest he should be picked up by the wily widow or spidery spinster.
2. Of legs or arms: Resembling those of a spider; long and thin.
c. 1845. De Quincey, Fatal Marksman, Wks. 1859, XII. 228. The old woman, stretching her withered spidery arms after the flying girl.
1880. Miss Broughton, Second Thoughts, I. i. He is a … fragile young man, slender as any reed, and with legs even more spidery than Jane’s.
1896. Crockett, Cleg Kelly, vi. 47. Delicate little keys with spidery legs.
b. Suggestive of the appearance of a spider with long and thin legs.
1862. H. Aïdé, Carr of Carrlyon, II. 228. The marchesa wrote, with characteristic effusion, in her long spidery characters.
1879. Stevenson, Trav. Cévennes (1886), 82. A spidery cross on every hill-top.
1894. A. Spinner, Study in Colour, 132. The writing was quite legible, although rather crooked and spidery in places.
c. Like a spider-web in formation; suggestive of a cobweb or cobwebs.
Not always clearly separable from prec.
1860. Ecclesiologist, XXI. 284. An ornate kind of German Late-Pointed, very spidery in detail.
a. 1893. Symonds, in H. F. Brown, Biogr. (1895), I. ii. 53. I hauled some spidery black weed out of a pool.
1909. Bond & Camm, Roodlofts, 172. The tracery is spidery.
3. Suggestive of that of a spider, in respect of entanglement, cunning, etc.
1843. Lytton, Last Bar., VI. i. I have of late narrowly and keenly watched that spidery web which ye call a Court.
1875. Besant & Rice, Harp & Crown, xviii. He had the spidery look as his flabby face shone through the panes.
4. Of the nature of spiders.
1871. Miss Braddon, Lovels of Arden, xi. There was a particular race of spiders, the biggest specimens of the spidery species it had ever been her horror to encounter.
5. Full of or infested by spiders.
1889. Marchioness of Stafford, How I Spent my Twentieth Year, 260. A gabled cottage … in reality rather uncomfortable—stuffy and spidery.
1894. D. C. Murray, Making of Novelist, 15. I shall never forget the spidery black-painted galleries and staircases.
