chinch bug

American

noun

a small lygaeid bug, Blissus leucopterus, that feeds on corn, wheat, and other grains.

chinch bug British

noun

a black-and-white tropical American heteropterous insect, Blissus leucopterus, that is very destructive to grasses and cereals in the US: family Lygaeidae
a related and similar European insect, Ischnodemus sabuleti

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of chinch bug

An Americanism dating back to 1775–85

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

A glass of water or a chinch bug or a copper coin is composed of molecules.

From Time Magazine Archive

Relatively impervious to either drought, damp or chinch bug, amenable to almost any type of soil, the bean's chief enemies are rabbits, grasshoppers, blister beetles.

From Time Magazine Archive

“They don’t know what a chinch bug or a Hessian fly is up there.”

From "The Teacher’s Funeral" by Richard Peck

The corn-root worm is charged with causing an annual loss of two per cent of the corn crop, or $20,000,000; the chinch bug another two per cent; the boll or ear-worm two per cent more.

From Our Vanishing Wild Life Its Extermination and Preservation by Hornaday, William Temple

It must of seemed longer to Oswald than it takes for a chinch bug to become a carboniferous Jurassic.

From Ma Pettengill by Wilson, Harry Leon

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023