white ant
noun
white ant
1 Americannoun
white-ant
2
American
[hwahyt-ant, wahyt-]
/ ˈʰwaɪtˌænt, ˈwaɪt- /
verb (used with object)
Australian Informal.
white ant
British
noun
Etymology
Origin of white ant1
First recorded in 1675–85
Origin of white-ant2
First recorded in 1915–20
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:
Oddly enough, this tribal art owes much of its vitality to the wood-eating white ant of Africa.
From Time Magazine Archive
It also proceeded along coöperative lines, so that while the lion, the tiger, and the ape are the prevailing types in certain regions, in others the prevailing type is the white ant.
From Twentieth Century Socialism What It Is Not; What It Is: How It May Come by Edmond Kelly
The flabby, tallow-like body makes this insect sufficiently repulsive, but it is for quite another reason that the white ant is the worst abused of all living vermin in warm countries.
From Library of the World's Best literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 12 by Various
The white ant, which is so destructive to the ordinary wooden pile, does not attack it.
From The Critic in the Orient by George Hamlin Fitch
There are white ant hills like ragged heaps of raw chocolate—very hard and strong.
From From Edinburgh to India & Burmah by W. G. (William Gordon) Burn Murdoch
Some Chinese love earthworm broth, and Zanzibaris feast on white-ant pie; the French have been known to eat eels with sea-urchin-gonad sauce, and some Hawaiians have a taste for broiled puppy.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 18, 2019
Valmīki was the author of the Rāmāyana, and is believed to have done penance for so long in one spot that a white-ant hill grew up round him.
From Omens and Superstitions of Southern India by Edgar Thurston
The tent, protected by the white-ant hillock and the giant tree-trunk, stood yet, but the first strong buffet of the whirlwind might pull out the ropes and carry it the Lord knows where.
From In Desert and Wilderness by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Their advanced scouts approached warily in the dark, but long before they had reached the sentries, they passed within a few feet of a party of guards concealed behind a white-ant hill.
From Ismailia by Sir Samuel White Baker
This fire-proof building was roofed with a thick cement of clay from the white-ant hills, that had been tempered for some weeks and mixed with chopped straw.
From Ismailia by Sir Samuel White Baker
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.
