sawfly
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of sawfly
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.
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"Also, I could mention sawfly larvae that lived in leaves and created tunnels in them as they ate their way through the thin layer of the leaf interior."
From Science Daily ● Dec. 21, 2023
When it does snow, it melts in a few days, and drought conditions have allowed the hemlock sawfly, which feeds on the foliage, to thrive.
From Salon ● Feb. 5, 2023
About now in the Northeast, you may witness the geometrically patterned larvae of the dogwood sawfly chewing on Cornus foliage.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 2, 2022
Of all these small burrowers, the voracious shrews find and consume the largest number of sawfly cocoons.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
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The Slug-worm is so called from the similarity of the larva of this sawfly to a small black slug.
From The Book of Pears and Plums by Bartrum, Edward
Eiseman is working on a guide to the larvae of sawflies — the most primitive group of Hymenoptera, the relatives of ants, bees and wasps.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 2, 2022
The tiny creatures that excavate a leaf’s epidermal layers to feed themselves are larvae from some 50 families of moths, flies, beetles and sawflies.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 2, 2022
Songbirds, snow geese, otters, herons, pelicans, snakes, mink, raccoon, northern leopard frogs, sawflies, and trumpeter swans, to start.
From Slate ● Sep. 5, 2018
In some Canadian forests a virus that affects pine sawflies has proved so effective in control that it has replaced insecticides.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
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Among such insects are the sawflies, so-called because the female has a saw-shaped ovipositor with which she slits open the needles of evergreen trees in order to deposit her eggs.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
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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.