A folk remedy or plant whose sap or properties were believed to cure adder bites; possibly a type of plant used in traditional medicine.
Compound of 'adder' and 'spit,' from a folk belief that the substance was either from an adder or effective against adder venom, combining animal name with descriptive verb.
Before modern medicine, people named plants after what they thought would cure them—'adderspit' reveals an entire system of folk pharmacology where the plant's name was practically a recipe for healing.
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