Welsh Word of the Day: Corryn (spider)

Are you afraid of corrod (spiders)? These creepy crawlies have a bunch of Welsh names differing from region to region and person to person, and today’s Welsh word of the day, corryn (spider), is one of them.

Luckily, a lot of the different words for corryn are quite similar, so you’ll usually recognise when someone is trying to warn you away from one!

I’ve chosen corryn as our word of the day because it’s the most common translation given for spider, but it’s not actually what my family and I use. We say pry copyn, a colloquial corruption of pryf copyn. Now, pryf copyn is a combination of pryf (insect / fly) and copyn, itself many people’s word for spider. This etymological Russian doll goes one step further as copyn is a diminutive form of cop, a borrowing of the Old English term for spider, copp. (It’s this word that gave us cobweb, by the way!)

Corryn has a similar history, also being a diminutive form of an archaic word. In this case it’s cor meaning either spider or dwarf, an indigenous Brittonic word which is also the root of the species of dog corgi / corgi.

There are so many different forms of copyn and coryn that it’s as hard to keep track of them as it is the real-life corrod in your tŷ (house):

• corryn
• coran
• cor
• corodyn
• pry(f) corryn
• pry(f) copyn
• pry(f) cop
• copyn
• or even… sbeidar!

And most of these are pluralised in diverse ways, too, although common alternatives to corrod include pryfed cop, pry cop, copynnod, copynnau, and corrynod… honestly with this one as long as you have the root cop or cor, people are probably going to get what you mean!

Words for spider are invariably masculine, so that does make things a little easier.

The corryn is an arachnid (arachnid) known for its wyth coes (eight legs) and its ability to produce sidan (silk), usually in the form of a gwe corryn (spiderweb) used to catch its prey.

Some corrod are gwenwynig (poisonous), so we’re very lucky in the UK that the dangerous kind generally aren’t a problem for us. It’s interesting then that many people suffer with arachnoffobia (arachnophobia) even here, where on a daily basis we’re mostly only confronted with corrod mawr y tŷ (house spiders), which venture into our cartrefau (homes) in the hope of finding shelter and a mate – and even make themselves quite useful catching pryfed / clêr (flies).

Of all our corrod, the one that’s closest to being a perygl (danger) is the gweddw ffug (false widow). The gweddw ffug is a recent introduction to the British hinsawdd. They seem dychrynllyd (scary) because they can brathu (bite) when startled and look very much like some species of the gweddw ddu (black widow).

In fact, the brath (bite) of a gweddw ffug is rarely worse than the pigiad (sting) of a cacynen (wasp).

Many other species of anifail (animal) or pryf (insect / creepy-crawly) are named after the humble corryn, especially those that share its impressive speed or coesfain (spindly / thin-legged) appearance. The chwilen gopynnaidd (spider-beetle) is an example, as well as one we’re all generally much more pleased to have in our homes – the blodyn pry cop (spider plant).

Other anifeiliaid that take the name of corryn in English may instead in Welsh be called by the name heglog, a word that literally just means long-legged but conveys a sense of skinniness and sprawling. So a spider-monkey is mwnci heglog and a spider-crab is cranc heglog.

Have you heard the story of the hen wraig fach (little old lady) who swallowed a fly? I’ve no idea what the moral of this bizarre tale is supposed to be, but in Welsh it would have a very different, and very certain, meaning.

Llyncu pry, which is literally to swallow a fly, is a traditional euphemism for getting pregnant. Now of course llyncu pry is something corrod do all the time, but they’re also at risk themselves as the equivalent of this phrase common across a lot of the South is llyncu corryn (to swallow a spider). I wonder why!