chinch bug
Americannoun
noun
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a black-and-white tropical American heteropterous insect, Blissus leucopterus, that is very destructive to grasses and cereals in the US: family Lygaeidae
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a related and similar European insect, Ischnodemus sabuleti
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
He called a chinch bug a Rhyparochromus, but he saddled his horse without a blanket and put bakin’ powder in the sour-dough.”
From The Man from the Bitter Roots by Caroline Lockhart
Write to the Division of Entomology, Washington, for bulletins on the chinch bug.
From Agriculture for Beginners Revised Edition by Charles William Burkett
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
