Other forms: locusts
A locust is a grasshopper that swarms in millions and strips whole fields. A plague of locusts, the locusts came, locust swarms.
It is the same insect as an ordinary grasshopper until crowding changes it — the touching of legs triggers a change in colour, shape and behaviour within hours, and the solitary insect becomes a swarming one. A swarm can eat its own weight in a day.
1nounlocustA grasshopper that swarms in millions.
“A swarm of locusts destroyed the farmers' crops in a single afternoon.”
locust is an insect.
Latin locusta names both the insect and the lobster, which is why lobster is the same word by another road.
Latin
locusta
Anglo-Norman
locuste
Middle English
locuste
English, today
locust
From Middle English locuste, from Anglo-Norman locuste, from Latin locusta. Middle English locuste, locust, from Anglo-Norman locuste, Middle French locuste, and their source, Latin locustam (“locust, crustacean, lobster”). a doublet of langouste. tree, originally referring to the carob (compare locust bean), is based on the resemblance of the trees' beanlike seed pods to the insect and is likely a ἀκρίς.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA