spiderlet

English

Etymology

From spider +‎ -let.

Noun

spiderlet (plural spiderlets)

1. A baby spider.

   Synonyms: spideret, spiderling

   • 1947 May, Walter Janer, “[Biology] The Life of Spiders”, in Bulletin of the American Association of Jesuit Scientists, Eastern Section, volume XXIV, number 4, page 112:

     The most curious of all are the ground spiders like the Lycosae which drag the egg sac around attached to the posterior end of the abdomen, or in some cases held by the chelicerae. When these latter hatch the young spiderlets climb on to the mother and let her carry them about.

   • 1960, Ralph Buchsbaum, Lorus J[ohnson] Milne, with Mildred Buchsbaum and Margery Milne, “The Spiders and Their Kin (Class Arachnida)”, in Living Invertebrates of the World (The World of Nature Series), London: Hamish Hamilton, page 244:

     The giant orb-weaving spider Nephila clavipes stands guard over her eggs, which are fastened to a leaf. Until the spiderlets hatch, she lets her 8-foot web go untended.

   • 1964, Craig Phillips, quotee, “Angel’s Hair”, in The UFO Evidence‎^[1], Washington, D.C.: The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena:

     On being questioned by the others as to what might be the nature of these webs, I explained to the others that an oft-repeated statement in natural history books is that very young spiders on hatching will frequently pay out long strands of silk from their spinnerets until the wind catches them and they eventually become airborne, sometimes being transported many miles and even, as I seemed to recall, far out to sea on occasion. […] Spiders can and do at times produce vast lengths (in proportion to their size) of web material at little expense to their own metabolism, and I visualized the little spiderlets, wherever they might be, continuing to emit their silken trails during their airborne journey as the wind broke and blew the first ones away.

   • 1968, Bertha Morris Parker, “Spiders”, in The New Golden Treasury of Natural History, New York, N.Y.: Golden Press, Western Publishing Company, Inc., →LCCN, page 127:

     When little spiders, or spiderlets, hatch, they look like full-grown spiders except that they are smaller and are very pale.

   • 1969, Madeleine L’Engle, “The Roc”, in Lines Scribbled on an Envelope and Other Poems, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, →LCCN, page 37:

     Hushabye, darlings, mama’ll get dinner / So sweet little fledglings won’t get any thinner. Rockabye, rocklings, roc, roc, roc a bye. Spiders bring squiggly worms, small as your eyelash. Salmon catch minnows, quick as a fly flash. Hairy red spiders give spiderlets lice. Cats bring their kittens home little grey mice.

   • 1980, John Graves, “[Coping] Trash as Treasure”, in From a Limestone Ledge: Some Essays and Other Ruminations About Country Life in Texas, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, page 65:

     I soak off their labels, wash them till they gleam and glitter, dry them upside down in a rack, plug their mouths with tissue against dust and web-weaving spiderlets, and then sort them according to hue and shape—burgundy, claret, rhine, or italianate oddball—before stowing them away in compartmented cartons liberated from a liquor store’s garbage.

   • 1980, David Robinson, “[Seeking a Place] The Travelers”, in Living Wild: The Secrets of Animal Survival, Washington, D.C.: National Wildlife Federation, →ISBN, pages 56 and 59:

     Ships many miles at sea find tiny spiders dropping in on them from the passing breeze. Somewhere on the far-off shore the little aeronauts, a few weeks out of the egg sac, seem to answer an inborn urge to emigrate to a new territory. […] Some of the spiderlets may travel only a few inches if the wind quits. But others could conceivably cross oceans.

   • 1980, Dennis L. Furnell, “May”, in The Country Book of the Year, Newton Abbot, Devon: David & Charles, →ISBN, page 140:

     Young spiders, though, do take to the air; indeed they were the first exponents of hang-gliding. On a day when the breeze is gentle the spiderlets climb to the top of a grass stem and spin their own hang glider from a silken thread.

   • 1984, Robert E[dward] Vardeman, Iron Tongue (Cenotaph Road; 4), New York, N.Y.: Ace Science Fiction Books, →ISBN, page 96:

     And on one slow circuit he saw a spider slowly making its way toward him along the aerial pathway. He swallowed hard, trying not to panic. His magic had availed him little. Without the use of his hands he couldn’t properly conjure. At one point he had even decided it was better to die in flames than to hang here awaiting dozens of hungry spiderlets—but he hadn’t been able to conjure up the fire spell at all. Now they came for him. To eat him. Pieces slashed off and fed to newborns.

   • 1984, Valerie Z. Nollan, “The Theme of Fire in Leonov’s Prose: 1922-1953”, in Russian Language Journal, volume XXXVIII, number 131, page 126:

     In Sot’ he provides the reader with a poetic description of the spread of a fire on a forest floor, from its playful beginnings to its untimely end in a heavy rainfall. The image of flames as countless nimble red spiderlets is especially effective.

   • 1985, Fraser Harrison, A Father’s Diary, New York, N.Y.: Pantheon Books, →ISBN, page 72:

     Currently, a very special treat is to be picked up, holding a torch, to examine a comer below one of the upper shelves in our kitchen dresser, where a female daddy-long-legs spider (Pholcus phalangiodes) has successfully hatched a large brood of spiderlets.

   • 1987, Albert the Great, translated by James J. Scanlan, “Book 26: [The Nature of Tiny Anemic Animals]”, in Man and the Beasts (De animalibus, Books 22-26) (Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies; 47), Binghampton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, →ISBN, page 427:

     The female lays her eggs in the fall, and the newborn spiders emerge at the beginning of the next spring. At this time a number of young spiderlets may be observed clinging to a single strand when the nest is gently nudged.

     [original: In autumno autem ovat et in principle veris exeunt araneae parvae ita quod ab uno filo plurimae dependent quando movetur nidus.]

   • 1992, Fredric L. Frye, “[Arachnids] “Tarantulas” and Other Spiders”, in Captive Invertebrates: A Guide to Their Biology and Husbandry, Malabar, Fla.: Krieger Publishing Company, →ISBN, pages 14–15:

     The females of some species remain very close to their egg masses until the hatching spiderlets are ready to emerge (Figure 13); some carry their broods of eggs around with them.

   • 1996 May 13, “[Obituaries] Garth Williams”, in The Times, number 65,578, London, page 21, column 5:

     The illustration in which Charlotte’s myriad of spiderlets hatch and drift away on their parachutes of silk, leaving Wilbur the pig forlorn below, remains in most nursery books spotted with children’s tearstains.

   • 2011, Gregory Maguire, “The Patchwork Conscience of Oz”, in Out of Oz (The Wicked Years), New York, N.Y.: William Morrow, →ISBN, page 160:

     Oh, but those little crab-lingered fingerlings really wanted to get in! Now some were trying to claw up through an old knothole whose bole had aged and didn’t sit true in the plank. […] But here came the dwarf opening her door, and the spiderlets melted away.

   • 2012, John F.D. Taff, “The Mire of Human Veins”, in Little Deaths, [Toronto, Ont.]: Books of the Dead Press, →ISBN, page 90:

     A host of small bodies is racing across her feet, up her legs. Small, furry, agile. Like their mother. […] “Hush, child,” her mother says, unfolding herself from the corner of the ceiling and stepping down, each leg stepping gently, careful not to crush the eggs, enshrouded in a caul of webbing, the hatchlings that teem across the floor. […] More of the spiderlets climb her legs, step through her hair, tangling it.

   • 2014, John A[lbert] Nagl, “Ghostriders in the Storm”, in Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice, New York, N.Y.: The Penguin Press, →ISBN, pages 20–21:

     She was hugely impressed by the giant wolf spider we caught in my bedroom and kept in a terrarium in the kitchen. I named it after her and regularly fed crickets to Susi the Spider, releasing her back to the wild only when she became with spiderlets just before the Ghostriders deployed to the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, California, for a monthlong exercise in February 1992, almost exactly a year after our fight in Desert Storm.

2. (rare) A stolon of a spider plant.
   • 1983, S[hlomo] Giora Shoham, “[Replenish the Earth and Subdue It] Da Capo: The Next Generation”, in Sex as Bait: Eve, Casanova, and Don Juan, Brisbane, Qld.: University of Queensland Press, →ISBN, page 59:

     Horticulturists know that a pampered spider-plant will not produce its offshoot stolon (its spiderlets); only when its soil is not rich and fertilizer is withheld (i.e., the spider-plant feels starved and threatened) will it start producing stolon in profusion.

   • 1998, Bill Marken, The Editors of the National Gardening Association, Container Gardening For Dummies®, Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley Publishing, Inc., →ISBN, pages 167 and 170:

     If you have a spider plant, prune off spiderlets (miniature plants or offsets at the branch tips), place them in water until they show roots, and then transplant. […] Grow more plants by rooting spiderlets (the mother plant’s extensions) in soil or water.

   • 2006, Mary Kate Hogan, “Spider Plant (Chlorophytum comosum)”, in 37 Houseplants Even You Can’t Kill, New York, N.Y.: Sterling Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 80:

     What’s fun about the spider plant are its babies—it shoots off little “mini spiders” that trail down around the edges. It you clip off these offspring and set them in water, they’ll sprout roots, and you can turn them into new plants. BASIC CARE In order for the spider to produce “spiderlets,” it needs enough light.