praying mantis
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of praying mantis
First recorded in 1700–10
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.
His proposed addition to Marcel Breuer’s original Whitney Museum would have hovered above it with predatory menace, like an 11-story concrete praying mantis.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 20, 2026
A praying mantis consumes her mate after copulation, termites suck blood out of wounded peers, and mosquitoes snack on larvae.
From New York Times • Mar. 25, 2022
Like the praying mantis who's male through the whole thing, and then has this egg sac, but Mom and I still call it "he."
From Salon • Nov. 15, 2021
She liked insects so much as a child, she remembers getting in trouble with her parents because she had forgotten that she had left praying mantis eggs in her treasure box.
From Seattle Times • Jul. 20, 2021
I found him in the lower branches of a tree, playing by swinging from side to side, oblivious to the bright green shock of a praying mantis walking across his knuckles.
From "Endangered" by Eliot Schrefer
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.
