| 释义 |
spidery, a.|ˈspaɪdərɪ|
[f. spider n. + -y.
Cotgrave (1611) has ‘Araignier, spiderie’, but the word otherwise belongs to the 19th century.]
1. a. Like a spider in appearance or form.
1837New Monthly Mag. LI. 365 That grotesque race, the Sapajous,..are slender,..long in tail, and spidery in general appearance. 1859Ld. Lytton Wanderer (ed. 2) 21 Spidery Saturn in his webs of fire. 1881J. W. Ogle Harveian Orat. 93 That hideous spidery crustacean, the crab.
Comb.1882Garden 25 Mar. 194/3 A bright spidery-looking flower.
b. fig. Entangling like a spider.
1825Coleridge Let. 21 Feb. (1971) V. 414 As we advance in years, the World, that spidery Witch, spins it's threads narrower and narrower, still closing in on us. 1875M. Collins Sweet & Twenty III. ii. vii. 19 Lest he should be picked up by the wily widow or spidery spinster.
2. a. Of legs or arms: Resembling those of a spider; long and thin.
c1845De Quincey Fatal Marksman Wks. 1859 XII. 228 The old woman, stretching her withered spidery arms after the flying girl. 1880R. Broughton Sec. Th. i. i, He is a..fragile young man, slender as any reed, and with legs even more spidery than Jane's. 1896Crockett Cleg Kelly vi. 47 Delicate little keys with spidery legs.
b. Suggestive of the appearance of a spider with long and thin legs.
1862H. Aïdé Carr of Carrl. II. 228 The marchesa wrote, with characteristic effusion, in her long spidery characters. 1879Stevenson Trav. Cevennes 82 A spidery cross on every hill-top. 1894A. 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.
1860Ecclesiologist XXI. 284 An ornate kind of German Late-Pointed, very spidery in detail. a1893Symonds in H. F. Brown Biogr. (1895) I. ii. 53, I hauled some spidery black weed out of a pool. 1909Bond & Camm Roodlofts 172 The tracery is spidery.
3. Suggestive of that of a spider, in respect of entanglement, cunning, etc.
1843Lytton Last Bar. vi. i, I have of late narrowly and keenly watched that spidery web which ye call a Court. 1875Besant & Rice Harp & Cr. xviii, He had the spidery look as his flabby face shone through the panes.
4. Of the nature of spiders.
1871M. E. Braddon Lovels 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.
1889Marchioness of Stafford How I Spent my Twentieth Year 260 A gabled cottage..in reality rather uncomfortable—stuffy and spidery. 1894D. C. Murray Making of Novelist 15, I shall never forget the spidery black-painted galleries and staircases. |