Re: Origin of term "Spider"

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

In AD7-587 Simon Favre answers the "Why Spider?" question in terms of "Italian
coachbuilders started building open carriages with tall wheels and lots of
suspension travel (floppy springs) so Italian families could take a ride out
to the countryside on really bad roads for a picnic. They called these open
carriages Spiders because they had the "long legs" needed to go over all the
bumps on the crappy dirt roads in the countryside."

If that were so, why didn't they call them "ragni"? If you look up "spider" in
the Italian end of an Italian-English dictionary you get zip; there is nothing
between "spicinare" (to break in small pieces, to corrode) and "spidocciare"
(to delouse, or alternately, to louse). 

The other half of the "Why Spider?" question is "Why Spider in Italy and
Spyder in Germany?" and the quick-without-doing-your-homework answer to that
is "because that is the way they spell "spider" in Germany." The fly in THAT
ointment is the follow-up question, "But Daddy, then why don't they call it
die spinne?" If you look up "spyder" in the German end of a German-English
dictionary you get zip; there is nothing between "sputen" (to make haste) and
"staat" (state, country, government).

The biggest gripe (albeit somewhat overstated) that certain lurking grumbly
old farts have about the digestisti is that so few EVER do their homework;
instead they ask questions which (in the view of those same l.g.o.f.s) are as
likely as not to be answered by others who also did not do their homework.
(Who, us?)

In the "English" end of any decent English-English dictionary you will find
something like "spider phaeton: a very high light carriage - -" Then you look
up phaeton, and perhaps even get to Phaethon, the son of the Sun-God Helios
who borrowed his dad's chariot and drove it so fast and recklessly that Zeus
had to zap him with a thunderbolt to save the world from terminal burnout.
Greek, not Italian.

Why is a "'Sprint" a "Sprint", rather than a volata, and why is a "Super" a
"Super" rather than a sopra or a sovra-? Why did the Italians use English
terms for such things - well, you have to think about a degree of snobbish
anglophilia which afflicted the upper crust of an impoverished people who were
patronized by the Milords doing the Grand Tour-

W.A.D.R., the vision of Italian families taking a ride out to the countryside
for a picnic reflects a singularly bucolic view of the sociology and economy
of the peninsula in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

(dyspeptic grumbles-)

John H.
Raleigh, N.C.

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