insect

UK/ˈɪn.sɛkt/US/ˈɪn.sɛkt/

nounA2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,695 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: insects

An insect is a small creature with six legs and a body in three parts. Head, thorax, abdomen, and usually wings.

The six legs are the test, which is why spiders with eight are not insects and neither are woodlice, centipedes or ticks. Calling them all bugs is common and biologically wrong, since a true bug is one particular order. Insects are the most numerous animals on earth by an enormous margin, and their steep decline in recent decades is one of the most serious things happening quietly.

Definitions of insect

1nouninsectA small animal with six legs and a three-part body.A2+
“There was an insect crawling along the windowsill.”

Where it comes from

An insect is a cut-up animal. Latin īnsectum translates the Greek entomon, cut into pieces, and the name points at the body being notched into segments.

Proto-Indo-European
*sek-
Ancient Greek
ἔντομον — insect
Latin
īnsectum
Middle French
insecte
English, today
insect

Built from

īnsectus · Latin — cut into, cut up, with a notched or divided body
īnsecō · Latin — to cut into, to cut up
secō · Latin — to cut
ἔντομος · Ancient Greek — cut into pieces

Middle French insecte, from Latin īnsectum, from īnsectus (“cut into, cut up, with a notched or divided body”), from perfect passive participle of īnsecō (“to cut into, to cut up”), from in- + secō (“to cut”), from the notion that the insect's body is "cut into" three sections (head, thorax, abdomen). Ancient Greek ἔντομον (“insect”), from ἔντομος (“cut into pieces”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 5 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

insect in the wild

A fly (pl. flies) is an insect of the order Diptera, named for the single pair of wings.
Fly
Instead, the final moult results in an adult insect.
Nymph (biology)
Although individually small, insects exist in enormous numbers.
Insectivore
Stick insects from the genera Phryganistria, Ctenomorpha, and Phobaeticus include the world's longest insects.
Phasmatodea
In homes and urban environments, the pests are the rodents, birds, insects and other organisms that share the habitat with humans, and that feed on or spoil possessions.
Pest control

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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