Ettercap name etymology determined! What next?

[Huw]

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.

Interesting. I found the following additional information from etymonline:

cob
"The N.E.D. recognizes eight nouns cob, with numerous sub-groups. Like other monosyllables common in the dial. its hist. is inextricable" [Weekley]. In the latest edition, the number stands at 11. Some senses are probably from O.E. copp "top, head," others probably from O.N. kubbi or Low Ger., all perhaps from a P.Gmc. base *kubb- "something rounded."

So, origin unknown. I did find that another OE word for spider was loppe or lobbe, which rimes with -cop. Could be some linguistic corruption going on which lead to ettercop.

 

[Raven Crowking]

EDIT: The poems from The Hobbit run as follows:

Old fat spider spinning in a tree!
Old fat spider can't see me!
Attercop! Attercop!
Won't you stop,
Stop your spinning and look for me?

Old Tomnoddy, all big body,
Old Tomnoddy can't spy me!
Attercop! Attercop!
Down you drop!
You'll never catch me up your tree!​

and

Lazy Lob and crazy Cob
Are weaving webs to wind me
I am far more sweet than other meat
But still cannot find me!

Here am I, naughty little fly;
You are fat and lazy.
You cannot trap me, though you try,
In your cobwebs crazy​

 

[Huw]

Just a guess, but "adder" might be.

No, "adder" is from "nadder", with the initial "n" being absorbed by the indefinite article (i.e. "a nadder" became "an adder"). Same thing happened to apron and orange. The opposite happened to newt (originally "eft").

"Nadder" is, I think, from the same root as Sanskrit "naga".

 

[ColonelHardisson]

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

Guys like Tolkien (a philologist) and Gene Wolfe have a knack for finding and using obscure, archaic words. More often than not, if I don't recognize a word they've used and can't find it in any of the dictionaries I have access to, it'll turn out that it is, indeed, a word so old and unused that only very old or exhaustive dictionaries will include it. That's why it can be irritating to me to read writers who try to emulate such wordsmiths, and simply make up words. I think "c'mon, guys, do the research."

There is a nifty little book called "Poplollies and Bellibones," which I found in the Bargain section of Barnes & Noble, which defines a lot of old, unusual words that sound made-up, but which aren't. Gygax used it as a reference way back - names like "Fonkin Hoddypeak" weren't just random gibberish.

 

[Raven Crowking]

No, "adder" is from "nadder", with the initial "n" being absorbed by the indefinite article (i.e. "a nadder" became "an adder"). Same thing happened to apron and orange. The opposite happened to newt (originally "eft").

"Nadder" is, I think, from the same root as Sanskrit "naga".

Well, like I said, it was just a guess.

EDIT: But I did find this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eitr

 

[Gez]

Same thing happened to apron and orange.

Apron, alright (from French naperon, which isn't an apron but a napkin by the way), but orange is less sure. Dictionaries say the name was influenced by the name of Orange, a French city. That said, the Sanskrit root is narangah, naranj in Arabic, then Melarancio in Italian (prefixed with mela, fruit -- or more properly, apple, but apple was at a time the generic name for all fruits, hence Adam & Eve's story). From there, it was calqued in French as pume orange (pume being an archaic form of pomme, same meaning: fruit/apple), then shortened as orange, and finally imported in English.

 

[Plane Sailing]

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.

Interesting, since a Natterjack is a rare european toad