Other forms: ants
An ant is a tiny hard-working insect that lives in a big group. An ant nest, ants everywhere, a line of ants.
A colony behaves as one organism and no individual is in charge — the queen lays eggs and does not direct anything. Ants find the shortest route to food by laying trails that strengthen with use, which is an algorithm engineers have copied. Note that the word is Old English and its origin beyond that is unknown.
1nounantA tiny insect that lives in a large colony.
“Ants carried the crumbs away in a long line across the kitchen floor.”
ant is an insect.
Old English aemete names the insect. Emmet, the dialect word, is the same word, and the origin beyond Germanic is unknown.
Middle English
ampte
English, today
ant
Built from
From Middle English ampte. From Middle English ampte, amte, amete, amote, ante, emete, emot, emotte, empt, empte, from Old English ǣmete, ǣmette, ǣmytte, ǣmætte (“ant”), from Proto-West Germanic āmaitijā (“ant”), of unknown, but probably from Proto-Germanic ē- (“off, away”) + maitaną (“to cut”), from Proto-Indo-European meh₂y- (“to cut”). See also emmet. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA