Learn English – Origin of “Arachnoleptic fit”

etymologyinternetpuns

In various websites on the Internet, including http://www.joke-archives.com/dictionaries/dictionarywords.html, I've come across the phrase Arachnoleptic fit.

Apparently all the words in that set (Beelzebug, Bozone, etc.) are all made by either adding, removing, or replacing a letter from an already existing word or phrase. But I can't figure out the original phrase for Arachnoleptic fit which only changes one letter of the word.

I've tried Googling, and got lots of pages mentioning the word, but none explaining its origin.

Best Answer

It looks just like a portemanteau of:

arachno[phobia] (spider) and
[epi]-leptic (falling).

I would guess the idea being that one behaves as one would during an epileptic episode, but now cause by a spider(web) - or probably, because of the fear of spiders that the web invokes.