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• white ant
  white ant

  noun

  termite.
• white-ant
  white-ant

  verb (used with object)

  to undermine or subvert from within.

white ant

¹ American  

noun

1. termite.

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white-ant ² American  

[hwahyt-ant, wahyt-] / ˈʰwaɪtˌænt, ˈwaɪt- /

verb (used with object)

Australian Informal.

1. to undermine or subvert from within.

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white ant British  

noun

1. another name for termite

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Etymology

Origin of white ant¹

First recorded in 1675–85

Origin of white-ant²

First recorded in 1915–20

Example Sentences

Oddly enough, this tribal art owes much of its vitality to the wood-eating white ant of Africa.

From Time Magazine Archive

This is because the white ant is the prize destroyer of property throughout Africa.

From An African Adventure by Marcosson, Isaac Frederick

They enter the infected house in large numbers, leaving a reserve force behind, and promptly destroy every white ant in the place.

From The Pearl of India by Ballou, Maturin Murray

This is the common white ant that digs into joists of houses.

From The Adventures of a Grain of Dust by Hawksworth, Hallam

It is extensively used for cabinet making and carving, and is not readily attacked by the white ant.

From The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century, Volume XLIII, 1670-1700 by Various