cucumber beetle

American

noun

any leaf beetle of the genus Diabrotica and related genera that feeds on cucumbers and other plants of the gourd family and is a vector of cucurbit wilt.

Etymology

Origin of cucumber beetle

An Americanism dating back to 1835–45

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.

Garden pests are often highly specialized and named after their favorite food: cabbageworm, corn earworm, tomato hornworm, Colorado potato beetle, cucumber beetle, pea weevil, pepper maggot, Mexican bean beetle, and so on.

From Salon • Aug. 8, 2021

For example, the cucumber beetle can transmit bacterial wilt and squash mosaic virus, both serious plant diseases that will destroy a crop.

From Salon • Aug. 8, 2021

A single colony of big brown bats in the American Midwest, by consuming 600,000 cucumber beetles in a year, prevents 33 million cucumber beetle larvae from feeding on the next year’s crop.

From New York Times • Dec. 11, 2020

The omnipresent enemies of all the cucurbitaceous crops are the little cucumber beetle and the large black "stink bug."

From Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) by Bailey, L. H. (Liberty Hyde)

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