Ettercap name etymology determined! What next?

[Plane Sailing]

Do you know whether the name Ettercap (for the humanoid spidery things) comes from?

I just found it cropping up in an old Scottish poem:

Ettercap, ettercap,
Spinnin your threid,
Midges for denner, an
Flees for your breid;
Sic a mishanter
Befell a bluebottle,
Silk roond his feet-
Your haund at his throttle!

And in Yorkshire Dialect the spider is known as Atterkop (which has a clear relationship)

Interesting, eh?

What other D&D creatures are actually named after dialect words for well known things?

Cheers

 

[Huw]

Etter: poison
Cop: spider (as in cob-web). Cap is just a variant. Probably originally meant "head".

Ettercop "poison head" is just an old name for spider.

Try www.etymonline.com, which has other variations for attercop and cobweb.

 

[Aloïsius]

Haven't you read the hobbit ? Bilbo sings about attercop and cob the mad IIRC.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Haven't you read the hobbit ? Bilbo sings about attercop and cob the mad IIRC.

At the time I thought it was just a made up word

 

[Doug McCrae]

Lich is an old English word for corpse, though the D&D monster is derived from C20 fantasy fiction, Clark Ashton Smith and RE Howard. I'm guessing fantasy fiction is the true source in all cases.

 

[Crothian]

When abouts was that poem written?

 

[Gez]

Etter: poison

Now that's interesting. Do you know of any other word derived from the same root?

Cop: spider (as in cob-web). Cap is just a variant. Probably originally meant "head".

If it comes from Latin, that's very probable indeed. If it's Germanic, I don't know.

 

[Huw]

Now that's interesting. Do you know of any other word derived from the same root?.

Not off-hand, but etymonline suggests "natterjack" as another derivation. It has cognates in other languages as "swelling" or "ulcer", so the original sense was probably poisonous bite.

If it comes from Latin, that's very probable indeed. If it's Germanic, I don't know.

Head is "Kopf" in German, but Old English had "heafod" - same root, but English has always had an initial "h". Anyone here from Scandanavia? Perhaps it's from Norse.

 

[ephemeron]

Head is "Kopf" in German, but Old English had "heafod" - same root, but English has always had an initial "h".

The cool thing is that "Kopf" is actually derived from Latin "cuppa", "bowl" -- "Haupt" is the German word that comes from the same root as "heafod" and Latin "caput". The Proto-Indo-European for "head" was *kauput; the initial "k" became "h" in the Germanic family.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Now that's interesting. Do you know of any other word derived from the same root?

Just a guess, but "adder" might be.