Other forms: cockroaches
A cockroach is a flat brown insect that scuttles from the light. Kill a cockroach, cockroach infestation, cockroaches in the kitchen.
Of some four and a half thousand species only a handful live in houses, and those few are very hard to remove because the eggs are protected in a hard case. The name is Spanish, cucaracha, reshaped by English speakers into two familiar words.
1nouncockroachA flat brown insect that scuttles from the light.
“She screamed when a cockroach ran out from under the fridge.”
cockroach is an insect.
Spanish cucaracha, reshaped by English speakers into the familiar words cock and roach.
Spanish
cucaracha
English, today
cockroach
Built from
From Spanish cucaracha, from cuca (“butterfly caterpillars”), of onomatopoeic origin; see also Greek κόκκυξ and Late Latin cucus. Influenced, by means of folk etymology, by cock and roach. a doublet of cucaracha.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA