A pupa is the still, sealed stage in which a larva becomes an adult. Inside the pupa, the pupa hatched, a pupa on a twig.
It looks inert and is anything but: inside, most of the larva is broken down and rebuilt into a completely different animal. In moths the pupa is usually wrapped in a silk cocoon and in butterflies it is a bare chrysalis. The plural is pupae.
1nounpupaThe still, sealed stage in which a larva becomes an adult.
“The caterpillar hung upside down from a leaf and turned into a pupa.”
pupa is a life stage.
Latin pupa means a girl or a doll. Linnaeus chose the name for the wrapped, doll-like form.
Proto-Indo-European
*peh₂w-
Latin
pūpa — little girl; doll, puppet
English, today
pupa
New Latin -, from a special use of Latin pūpa (“little girl; doll, puppet”). a doublet of pupe; compare also puppet, puppy.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA