Macquarie Dictionary

or

Australian Word Map

Back to regionalism list

There are 2 results of your search for spider1.

spider1


noun a drink consisting of flavoured aerated water to which ice-cream has been added, served in a tall glass. Compare ice-cream soda.

Contributor's comments: I have heard spider used in Qld, mainly inner city cafes. I have always used spider but I grew up in Melbourne.

Contributor's comments: Spider has been used for that term in Brisbane since the 70's to my knowledge. My children still call that drink a spider.

Contributor's comments: My grandmother introduced me to the delights of spiders. She came from Orange in NSW. I have used the term all my life but don't know if that is a family usage or location. I mainly grew up on the NSW/Qld border and in the New England Region.

Contributor's comments: In SW Riverina it was a spider, and it is also going strong today in Perth.

Contributor's comments: In the 1950s-60s in South West Riverina a Spider was the only name I knew for soft drink with ice-cream added. Moving to the NSW North West Slopes, bordering on New England, in the 1970s I learned the Lemonade Spider was called Lemonade Soda.

Contributor's comments: McDonalds likes to call them "coke floats" - I think they'd sell more if they called them spiders.

Contributor's comments: I drank spiders as a kid in the 70's, but my mum was from Melbourne and she was the one who started it all with me and my friends in Newcastle.

Contributor's comments: [Perth informant] Is it just me or are their others who remember spiders as being predominantly made with ginger beer. The home made variety, if it made it through a hot spell without exploding in the back shed.

Contributor's comments: Growing up in Kyabram (in northern Victoria) my earliest recollection of a spider (NOT the eight-legged variety) goes back to the early 1960s. It was a glass of softdrink (any flavour, but usually cola), to which a generous dollop of vanilla ice-cream was added.

Contributor's comments: I have also heard it calls a "coke and a float" though the difference is that a spider is served with ice cream in a glass and a bottle of soft drink and you pour the soft drink over the ice cream, a coke and a float is coke served with ice cream in it.

Contributor's comments: I always found these were best when made with raspberry soda of some description. I believe a coke spider with strawberry ice cream was a "red back spider".

Contributor's comments: I first ate/drank spiders in New Zealand in the early 1950s.

spider2


In Townsville in the mid-80s, a spider was a person who is like a gothic or goth. They hung out at drag pub and listened to alternative music, wore lots of black and had messy dirty hair. In Brisbane they called them 'swampies".

Contributor's comments: