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Glite Dictionary
🌳 Wavy wood pattern 🌳 Wavy wood grain 🕷️ A spider
fiddleback

fiddleback

9.7
A wavy wood grain pattern used on instruments or a spider with a violin mark on its back
  • noun
  • /ˈfɪdəlˌbæk/
  • Specialized
translation icon : grano de madera de grano ondulado
  • The artisan chose the fiddleback wood to create a stunning violin, emphasizing its unique wavy grain pattern.
  • fiddleback maple

Examples

  • His poems have appeared in several journals, including Caketrain, Double Room, The Fiddleback, Phantom Limb, and Spectrum, and his reviews and criticism have appeared in The Hollins Critic, Rain Taxi, and other journals.

    Blog text (17)

  • This limited-edition guitar has a beautiful fiddleback finish that enhances its overall elegance.

  • She painted a detailed illustration of a fiddleback spider, highlighting its distinctive violin-shaped mark.

Surface Forms

fiddleback singular
fiddlebacks plural

Morphology

fiddleback = fiddle + back (transparent) = fiddle + back

Refers either to the back of a fiddle (pattern on instrument) or a marking on a creature's back resembling a fiddle; both senses are directly inferable from the compound parts.

Etymology

Fiddleback joins fiddle ('violin') and back because the wavy wood pattern is found on the back of fiddles, and a certain spider has a dark mark that looks like a small violin. So fiddleback can mean either that special wood pattern or the spider with the violin-shaped mark.