Other forms: caterpillars
A caterpillar is the long soft creeping creature that will one day become a butterfly. A hairy caterpillar, caterpillars on the leaves, feed the caterpillar.
It does nothing but eat and grow, and inside the chrysalis most of its body is broken down and rebuilt — some memories survive the process, which is genuinely strange. Some hairy ones sting. The name may come from an Old French phrase meaning hairy cat.
1nouncaterpillarThe creeping larva of a butterfly or moth.
“A green caterpillar was munching its way through the cabbage leaves.”
caterpillar is a larva.
Probably from an Old French phrase meaning hairy cat, from Latin catta, a cat, plus pilosa, hairy.
Latin
catta
fro-nor
catepeluse
Middle English
catirpel
English, today
caterpillar
Built from
From Middle English catirpel, catirpeller, probably from fro-nor catepeluse (Modern French chatte + pileuse (“hairy cat”)), from Latin catta + pilōsa. The sense "rapacious, extortionate person" arose by association with obsolete piller (“plunderer”). See Modern Norman cattepeleuse. Displaced native kaleworm, from cowle worm, cale worme (“caterpillar, corn weevil”), from cawelwyrm, cawelwurm (“caterpillar”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA