gnat
any of certain small flies, especially the biting gnats or punkies of the family Ceratopogonidae, the midges of the family Chironomidae, and the black flies of the family Simuliidae.
British. mosquito.
Idioms about gnat
strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, to fuss about trifles while ignoring more serious matters.
Origin of gnat
1Other words from gnat
- gnatlike, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use gnat in a sentence
Lawyers and businessmen swarm like gnats around the young geniuses, neither of whom has much patience for protocol.
And so the apparent solution struck at the RNC is to skip over the facts as if we all have the attention span of gnats.
Snow was like a swarm of white gnats hitting the windshield, the wipers hypnotically useless.
It was still summer, and the gnats had begun to multiply to a prodigious and alarming extent.
My Ten Years' Imprisonment | Silvio PellicoBut why not think of it when I was dying of suffocation; when the air was filled with gnats, and my bed with bugs?
My Ten Years' Imprisonment | Silvio Pellico
The wild beasts are driven out of these places, at the time of the rising of the dog-star, by large gnats.
Before them hang blinds made of slight reeds, which exclude flies and gnats while they admit fresh air.
Gnats are blown with the wind, but kites rise only against it.
Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel | Frank G. Allen
British Dictionary definitions for gnat
/ (næt) /
any of various small fragile biting dipterous insects of the suborder Nematocera, esp Culex pipiens (common gnat), which abounds near stagnant water
Origin of gnat
1Derived forms of gnat
- gnatlike, adjective
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
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