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
In addition, the party of explorers found their animals woefully bitten by the tsetse fly, rhinoceroses and elephants were too plentiful to be interesting, and the great white ant made itself tiresome.
From A Book of Discovery The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest Times to the Finding of the South Pole by M. B. (Margaret Bertha) Synge
And yet the white ant can never procure any food until it comes above ground.
From Library of the World's Best literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 12 by Various
The white ant often lays 80,000 in a day, and so continues for two years, probably laying no less than 40,000,000 eggs.
From Agriculture for Beginners Revised Edition by Charles William Burkett
The termite or white ant is a small insect, with a bloated, yellowish-white body, and a somewhat large thorax, oblong-shaped, and colored a disagreeable oily brown.
From Library of the World's Best literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 12 by Various
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
Nell's tent stood on a high and dry spot close to a big white-ant hillock, which barred the access from one side and for that reason lessened the labor of building the zareba.
From In Desert and Wilderness by Henryk Sienkiewicz
The small white-ant nests from two to five feet high were very numerous; at 12.40 p.m. a slight depression in the country was observed, and limestone appeared, and deep hollows were frequent.
From Journals of Australian Explorations by Augustus Charles Gregory
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
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.
