- 1狼蛛；一般口語指「捕鳥蛛」那種大型毛蜘蛛
A tarantula is a big hairy spider. In everyday English the word means the large, thick-legged, furry spiders kept as pets and shown in films — the ones from tropical America, some big enough to sit across your hand. Dictionaries usually call them poisonous, and they do have venom, but for almost all species a bite on a human is about as bad as a bee sting; the hairs they flick off their bodies, which badly, are the bigger nuisance. So the fear they cause is out of proportion to the danger, which is exactly why films use them. There is an older, narrower meaning: a particular wolf spider found around Taranto in southern Italy. That is the original tarantula, and it is the one in the old story about the dancing cure. Scientists still use the name that way, but if a normal English speaker says 'tarantula', they mean the big furry pet-shop kind. The plural can be 'tarantulas' or, more formally, 'tarantulae' — use 'tarantulas'.
組成From Medieval Latin 'tarantula', from Old Italian 'tarantola', from Taranto, a seaport in southern Italy — named after the town where the original spider was common. The town's name goes back through Latin Tarentum to Ancient Greek Tárās.
同家族的字
- tarantellathe Italian dance, named after the same town of Taranto
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
tarantulanoun/təˈɹæn.t͡ʃʊ.lə/
- 1
Any of the large, hairy New World spiders comprising the family Theraphosidae.
- Cockroaches, centipedes, tarantulas, scorpions, and mosquitoes are abundant in summer. [...] Tarantulas and scorpions are little noticed by those who have been there any length of time.
- In the southern portions of the State we have met with specimens of brown tarantula weighing a full Troy ounce, but these were of unusual size. The wood tarantula is the largest of all, occasional specimens weighing an ounce and a half, inhabits dead wood, is very active on a warm day, is found of sunning himself, and is quite courageous, leaping on a large lizard, with a perfect recklessness of consequences. [From the Alta California.]
- 2
A member of certain other groups of spiders, generally characterized by large size, hairiness, or membership of infraorder Mygalomorphae to which Theraphosidae family also belongs.
- The small funnel-web tarantulas are sedentary but notable for their aggressiveness and the strong action of their venom on human beings. A. robustus and formidabilis have caused human deaths.
- tergites: dorsal sclerites on the body; the hard plates on the abdomen of the atypical tarantulas that indicate segmentation
- 3
datedA species of wolf spider, Lycosa tarantula, native to southern Europe, the mildly poisonous bite of which was once thought to cause an extreme urge to dance (tarantism).
- [I]t is better to be pained with the ſting of a Snake, and recouer, then be tickled with the venime of Tarantula and dye laughing: [...]
- Many men catch this malady [i.e., melancholy] by [...] ſtinging with that kind of ſpider called Tarantula; [...] Their ſymptomes are merrily deſcribed by Iovianus Pontanus. Ant. dial. how they daunce alogether, and are cured by Muſick.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。