Other forms: earwigs
An earwig is a brown insect with pincers at its rear end. An earwig in the flowers, pincers of an earwig, earwigs under the pot.
It does not crawl into ears, and the old belief that it does is where the name comes from. The pincers are for defence and courtship, and the folded hindwings underneath are shaped remarkably like a human ear.
1nounearwigA brown insect with pincers at its rear end.
“An earwig crawled out of the lettuce, its forked tail raised.”
earwig is an insect.
Old English earwicga is ear plus a word for beetle, from the shape of the folded hindwing.
Old English
ēarwicga
Middle English
erwigge
English, today
earwig
From Middle English erwigge, from Old English ēarwicga, from ēare + wicga, so named from the appearance of the hindwings, which are unique in their resemblance to human ears when unfolded. Compare typologically Dutch oorworm, German Ohrwurm, Danish ørentvist; French perce-oreille, Romanian urechelniță; Russian уховёртка, Serbo-Croatian uholaža, Slovak ucholak; Lithuanian auslinda (all are cognates via h₂ows-). Also compare чихүүр хорхой (<+ чих), kulağakaçan (<+ kulak).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA