what goes around comes around (was: spider. spyder)

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

In AD8-0039 Gert-Jan from Holland relayed spider-source information from a
website www.spider.nu, (which I was unable to connect to), tracing the term to
a coachbuilder named Holmes in Dublin in 1860 who developed as a mix of the
Tilbury with the phaeton and called it a Spyder. The information parallels
that posted in a previous discussion on the digest; in alfa-digest v1 #183
(October 26 1995) Alex Angerhofer relayed a previous post in the italian-cars
digest by Aldo Vanini who had written "Mr. Archibald Holmes from Dublin,
Ireland,  coachbuilder (real coaches, pulled by horses...) used for the first
time the term "spyder"  (misspelling "spider") to indicate a new kind of light
coach combining the features of the tilbury (two seats) and of the
phaeton(four seats). Because the small body and the big wheels it reminded him
of a spider."

 Up to this point one would wonder whether Aldo Vanini got his information
from the same www source, or the source got it from Vanini or the digest, or
both got it from a third source. However, Gert-Jan also relayed, from the same
www source, "Some Italians say the word comes from 'speed', which becomes
'speeder' or 'Spider'". That connection is one I have seen in only one place,
which was the next alfa-digest post after Alex Angerhofer's in ad-1:183, in
which Pat Braden wrote "In Italian, spider is indeed pronounced 'speeder.'
That is, a long "I." The reason it is pronounced as a dipthong in English (ai)
goes back to the Great Vowel Shift which occurred in the English Language
during the Norman occupation of England." So, pending further information, I'm
guessing that the web source Gert-Jan cites probably got its information from
the digest, and you know how reliable that information is - - often good but
not infallible.

 It may well be that in 1860 Archibald Holmes from Dublin built a carriage he
called a spider or spyder. Whether that was either an early use or a seminal
use is open to question. One of the many standard dictionary definitions for
'spider' is "a spider phaeton, waggon or cart"; the OED, which is useful
particularly for its dated citations, gives "A lightly built cart, trap, or
phaeton with a high body and disproportionately large and slender wheels.
Orig. S.African" with a few citations 1879-1895, noted locations in Pretoria
and Brooklyn, nothing in Dublin. For the more general definition of the term
'phaeton' the OED gives "A species of four-wheeled open carriage of light
construction; usually drawn by two horses, and with one or (now generally) two
seats facing forward - -" with an earliest citation in 1735, in 'Machines
approuves par l' Acad.'; "Chaise de poste dont on peut faire un Phaeton". The
fourth reference after that is 1794, Felton's "Carriages", which is a large
book of colored lithographs of fashionable carriage designs, (serving
primarily as a portfolio for promoting services to potential clients) and
which was one of the sources from which I had drawn my understanding that the
sources of 'Spider' and 'Spyder' were eighteenth-century British coachbuilding
treatises. I can't give page references, my digging that tangent was in
various libraries in the late sixties, I don't have the book myself, and doubt
that there would be a copy nearer to me than the Library of Congress; to the
best of my recollection the copy I used was at the University of Michigan.
I'll look next chance I get.

Cheers,

John H.

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