Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Arachnid
/əˈræknɪd/noun
Any of the eight-legged arthropods including spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks.
The Greek roots
ἀράχνη
arákhnē
spider, spider's web
Literally: “spider-creature”
Follow a root:ἀράχνη2 words
The story of the word
Ἀράχνη was both the animal and the web it made, and it was also the weaver in the story who challenged Athena and was turned into a spider for winning. Whether the myth named the creature or the creature suggested the myth is not settled, and the fullest version we have is Ovid's, written in Latin. Lamarck grouped the class as Arachnides around 1815, and English had the singular by the 1830s. Anatomists borrowed the same word for the arachnoid membrane over the brain, named for its cobweb texture.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1830s
Same family
arachnophobiaarachnoid
In a sentence
Ticks are arachnids, which surprises people who file them with insects.