insect
Americannoun
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any animal of the class Insecta, comprising small, air-breathing arthropods having the body divided into three parts (head, thorax, and abdomen), and having three pairs of legs and usually two pairs of wings.
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any small arthropod, such as a spider, tick, or centipede, having a superficial, general similarity to the insects.
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a contemptible or unimportant person.
adjective
noun
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any small air-breathing arthropod of the class Insecta, having a body divided into head, thorax, and abdomen, three pairs of legs, and (in most species) two pairs of wings. Insects comprise about five sixths of all known animal species, with a total of over one million named species
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(loosely) any similar invertebrate, such as a spider, tick, or centipede
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a contemptible, loathsome, or insignificant person
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Any of very numerous, mostly small arthropods of the class Insecta, having six segmented legs in the adult stage and a body divided into three parts (the head, thorax, and abdomen). The head has a pair of antennae and the thorax usually has one or two pairs of wings. Most insects undergo substantial change in form during development from the young to the adult stage. More than 800,000 species are known, most of them beetles. Other insects include flies, bees, ants, grasshoppers, butterflies, cockroaches, aphids, and silverfish.
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See Notes at biomass bug entomology
Other Word Forms
- insect-like adjective
- insectean adjective
- insectival adjective
- noninsect noun
Etymology
Origin of insect
First recorded in 1595–1605; from Latin insectum, noun use of neuter of insectus, past participle of insecāre “to incise, cut”; translation of Greek éntomon “insect,” literally, “notched or incised one”; entomo-; segment
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.
Their highly organized societies raise an obvious question: how did insects with such advanced social systems evolve from solitary ancestors that closely resembled modern cockroaches?
From Science Daily
Covered in fractal patterns like “the symmetrical innards of a halved cabbage,” the giant humanoid insect reclines, “a god-sized man sleeping atop the quilt of the land.”
Semi-natural grassland also continues to be lost, despite being seen as a priority habitat and vital for a whole range of plants, fungi, insects, ground-nesting birds, small mammals and reptiles.
From BBC
Though it no longer displays an array of edible insects, the food is just as good.
In noncompliance records from 2023 reviewed by The Times, Manning Beef was accused of multiple instances of a leaky ceiling, separate instances of live insects on the kill floor, unsanitary conditions and operational malfunctions.
From Los Angeles Times
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.
