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
There the ceiling-joists were gracefully festooned with cobwebs, the floor had many a great hole in it, caused by white ant and damp.
From An Australian Lassie by A.J. (Alfred J.) Johnson
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 Maturin Murray Ballou
The lion and the tiger no longer reign in the jungle nor the white ant in the Pampas.
From Twentieth Century Socialism What It Is Not; What It Is: How It May Come by Edmond Kelly
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
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
In the same spirit his companions speak of their white-ant existence without a shade of complaint.
From War by Pierre Loti
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
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
Among the white-ant hillocks shot upwards here and there euphorbias, with boughs like the arms of a candle-stick.
From In Desert and Wilderness by Henryk Sienkiewicz
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.
