beetle
1 Americannoun
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any of numerous insects of the order Coleoptera, characterized by hard, horny forewings that cover and protect the membranous flight wings.
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(loosely) any of various insects resembling the beetle, as a cockroach.
verb (used without object)
noun
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a heavy hammering or ramming instrument, usually of wood, used to drive wedges, force down paving stones, compress loose earth, etc.
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any of various wooden instruments for beating linen, mashing potatoes, etc.
verb (used with object)
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to use a beetle on; drive, ram, beat, or crush with a beetle.
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to finish (cloth) with a beetling machine.
noun
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a heavy hand tool, usually made of wood, used for ramming, pounding, or beating
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a machine used to finish cloth by stamping it with wooden hammers
verb
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to beat or pound with a beetle
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to finish (cloth) by means of a beetle
noun
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any insect of the order Coleoptera , having biting mouthparts and forewings modified to form shell-like protective elytra
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a game played with dice in which the players draw or assemble a beetle-shaped form
verb
verb
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of beetle1
First recorded before 900; late Middle English bit(t)il, betylle, bityl, Old English bitel(a), betl, derivative of bītan bite
Origin of beetle2
First recorded before 900; Middle English betel, bitille “mallet, hammer,” Old English bītel, bētel, bȳtel (cognate with Middle Low German bētel “chisel”), derivative of bē(a)tan beat
Origin of beetle3
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English; back formation from beetle-browed
Explanation
A beetle is a dark, shiny, hard-shelled insect. Your garden-loving grandmother will be distressed when she discovers her prize roses are infested with hungry beetles. A beetle usually has pincers or a biting mouth in front and wings that are hard and protective, forming a kind of shell or armor over its body. There are around 400,000 different species of beetles, and they make up a quarter of all known animals. The beetles people are most familiar with are garden pests, nibbling on plants and flowers. The Old English word for beetle, bitela, literally means "little biter."
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.
See Examples For:
The northern dune tiger beetle is particularly fast moving and can travel at up to 2.5m a second, said Harper.
From BBC ● Jul. 13, 2026
Others include the adonis blue butterfly, the armed nomad bee and the red-tailed mason bee, the shining pot beetle and the large scabious mining bee.
From BBC ● Jun. 13, 2026
Japanese red elder plants protect their own survival by dropping fruits that contain Heterhelus beetle larvae.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 12, 2026
Once the beetle turns its own pheromones off, it can’t turn them back on.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 10, 2026
Hazel turned one of the stink bugs over with the toe of his wet tennis shoe and the shining black beetle strove madly with floundering legs to get upright again.
From "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck
At barely more than five feet tall, and with a bushy white beard and beetled brow, magician James “The Amazing” Randi resembles nothing so much as an angry elf.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 19, 2015
Since quantities of U.S. nursery stock are grown in the most beetled area of New Jersey, the insects would soon have infested the whole U.S. but for a firm Federal quarantine.
From Time Magazine Archive
England was impressed by rugged, eloquent Mr. W. Benjamin Disraeli noticed Webster's "fine brow, lofty, broad, and beetled, deepset eyes."
From Time Magazine Archive
Plump, dewlapped Judge Caverly beetled through his spectacles in amazement at the couple, said something secret.
From Time Magazine Archive
On one side the mass rose gradually up by steps and turrets; on the other, the granite beetled into a low cliff springing abruptly from the turf.
From Children of the Mist by Phillpotts, Eden
This beetling between England and Ireland would be repeated throughout his life.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 27, 2017
From almost anywhere in La Rinconada, you look up and you see her: La Bella Durmiente, Sleeping Beauty, an enormous glacier beetling above the town.
From The New Yorker ● Apr. 13, 2015
His unusual actorly physiognomy—the ruddy, transparent skin, the bulky but far from graceless body, the beetling blond eyebrows—lent itself to all manner of physical and gestural shape-shifting.
From Slate ● Feb. 3, 2014
Each looked like a character the other might have drawn, Maurice with his fireplug body and beetling brows and Robert with his shock of Wild Thing hair.
From Slate ● May 9, 2012
Clive Pike, to my left, eyes beetling bigger than humanly possible, g-force ribbling his face.
From "Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell
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.
