tarantula

Via Medieval Latin, from Old Italian tarantola, named after Taranto, a seaport in southern Italy; from Latin Tarentum, from Ancient Greek Τάρᾱς (Tárās, “Tarās”); compare Modern Greek: Τάραντας (Tárantas, “Tarantas”); Tarantino Tarde; ultimately from Illyrian *darandos (“oak”).[1]
First recorded in English in the mid 16th century: usage for the New World species may have been influenced by Spanish tarántula.

• IPA^(key): /təˈɹænt͡ʃələ/

tarantula (plural tarantulas or tarantulae)

1. Any of the large, hairy New World spiders comprising the family Theraphosidae.
   • 1857, John Askew, A voyage to Australia and New Zealand, including a visit to Adelaide:

     Cockroaches, centipedes, tarantulas, scorpions, and mosquitoes are abundant in summer.

   • 1873 May 3, “The tarantula -- an interesting native of California”, in Friends' Intelligencer, volume 30, number 10:

     In the southern portions of the State we have met with specimens of brown tarantula weighing a full Troy ounce, but these were of unusual size. The wood tarantula is the largest of all, occasional specimens weighing an ounce and a half, inhabits dead wood, is very active on a warm day, is found of sunning himself, and is quite courageous, leaping on a large lizard, with a perfect recklessness of consequences.

2. A species of wolf spider, Lycosa tarantula, native to southern Europe.
   • 1678, An Alphabetical Table of the Philosophical Transactions from March 6. 1665 to July 1677, T.:

     The story of the Tarantula's biting to be cured by peculiar Musick and Dancing, Examined in Calabria the proper place, and there suspected to be fabulous, n. 83, p. 4066

   • 1723, Giorgio Baglivi, “A Disseratation of the Anatomy, Bitings, and Other Effects of the venemous Spider, call'd, Tarantula”, in The Practice of Physick, page 314:

     A Tarantula is a venemous Spider, so call'd from Tarentum, an ancient City of Magna Gracia, upon the Ionian Sea. Those who are once bit by it, are never quite cur'd of the Venom; for it revives every Year, and occasions a long Series of Evils, which would be very annoying to the Patients, if they did not take due Care of their Health by Dancing and Balls.

   • 1837 February 18, “Hunting the Tarantula Spider”, in The Mirror, number 821:

     On May 7, 1812, during my stay at Valencia, in Spain, I took, without hurting him, a tarantula of tolerable size, which I imprisoned in a glass covered over with paper, in which I had made a square opening.

3. A member of certain other groups of spiders, generally characterized by large size, hairiness, or membership with the Theraphosidae in infraorder Mygalomorphae.

• (Theraphosidae): bird spider, monkey spider, rain spider

• tarantella
• tarantism

• tarantula in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• tarantula at OneLook Dictionary Search