The Collaborative International Dictionary
Trapdoor \Trap"door`\, n.
(Arch.) A lifting or sliding door covering an opening in a roof or floor.
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(Mining) A door in a level for regulating the ventilating current; -- called also weather door.
--Raymond.Trapdoor spider (Zo["o]l.), any one of several species of large spiders which make a nest consisting of a vertical hole in the earth, lined with a hinged lid, like a trapdoor. Most of the species belong to the genus Cteniza, as the California species ( Cteniza Californica).
Wiktionary
n. Any spider, of the family Ctenizidae, that constructs a silk-lined burrow with a hinged lid.
Usage examples of "trapdoor spider".
Niall continued to have nightmares about the trapdoor spider until the day he saw it destroyed.
Only a few rays of light filtered into the darkness, and as he lay on his bed of grass, he began to imagine that the trapdoor spider was creeping towards the burrow.
In her flared nostrils and glittering eyes, he saw now an eroticism as cold as that of the trapdoor spider and the whip-tailed skink.