What is the word history of arachnid and how did the word originate?

Answer 1

Arachnid has an interesting origin. In ancient Greek 'arakhne' meant spider, which the Greeks observed as weavers; so that's the short and ugly answer to your question, but there is a long and beautiful answer that I hope you'll read.

Ovid, a Roman poet who documented many of the old stories in Metamorphoses , speaks of Arachne as the daughter of a shepherd. She spun her yarn and wove beautiful patterned cloth upon her loom. She became very good at weaving, and claimed that her skill was greater than Athena, goddess of wisdom and crafts (all of these gods and goddesses can best be thought of as representing human attributes). Athena became angry that she was not getting credit for being the source of Arachne's skill, and so disguised herself as an old woman and set up a contest between her and Arachne. She warned Arachne about comparing her skill to that of a Goddess, warning her to plead for fogiveness and mercy, and to acknowledge that Athena was the source of her skill. The pride that Arachne showed was called hubris, and was a certain way to bring down the wrath of the gods, who hated such excessive pride.

The contest then began. .Athena wove a beautiful pattern representing four contests where the gods punished mortals who had set themselves as equal to or better than the gods.

Arachne's work showed ways that the gods had misled and abused mortals. She concentrated on Zeus, the chief god, who had a penchant for seducing or raping mortal women. Athena looked at Arachne's work and saw that it was more beautiful than her own weaving, and that it also insulted the gods, who themselves demonstrated excessive pride in my opinion. Athena was furious, and ripped Arachne's work to pieces, and then turned her into a spider, and cursed her descendants to forever spin as Spiders.. The Greeks honored Arachne by calling spiders after her. That's the longer version, and the one I prefer for its beauty and teachings on hubris. Humans should not claim to be better than the gods, because bad things will follow. You know, "pride goes before a fall"