Ἀράχνη

In the feminine, [it is] the web. But a)ra/xnhs as a masculine [is] the creature; [so called] from its having narrow tracks [a)raia\ i)/xnh].
"Three girls of an age, skilled just as a spider at weaving a narrow thread, dedicated [...]."¹
The spider is mentioned in Hesiod² and in Pindar³ and in Callias.⁴ They also say a)raxnika/ ["spidery things"], from the nominative a)ra/xnhs. Callias in Cyclopes [writes]: "weaving their way just like a spidery [person]."⁴ But Sophocles [uses] the feminine in Inachus: "all the weavers' things were a spider's web in weight".⁵ Callimachus [writes]: "a spider's-web work".⁶ Cratinus in Pytinê [writes]: "you are holding your stomach in the middle of spiders' webs."⁷ Pherecrates in Tyranny [writes]: "so spiders' webs just as for empty fig trees."⁸ Nicophron in Origins of Aphrodite [writes]: "so something spidery seems to have come into being."⁹