insect

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin īnsectum, short for animal īnsectum (“an animal notched or cut into”),^[2][3][4] the neuter past participle of īnsecō (“to cut into, cut up”),^[2][5][6] formed from in- (“into”) and secō (“to cut”), the source of section.^[4][3][7] Pliny used the Latin word as a loan translation of Ancient Greek ἔντομον (éntomon, “insect”), Aristotle's term, from ἐντέμνω (entémnō, “to cut in”), the source of entomology;^[2][3][7][8] both names refer to the segmented body of insects.^[5][8] Barnhart thinks the English borrowing may have been influenced by insecte,^[5] which the OED records in the 16th century,^[2] and Skeat took the word through French.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A small invertebrate animal with a segmented body and several pairs of legs: 1601, in Philemon Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History,^{[2][10][11][12]} about 1600 in Etymonline.^[3] The OED has an earlier zoological use in George Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie (1589).^[2]

Semantic evolution

At first the word covered any small creature with a segmented body, including spiders and other creatures that are not insects in the modern sense;^[2][13][14] Merriam-Webster still records this loose, non-technical use.^[11] Johnson (1755) explained the name by the "separation in the middle of their bodies".^[15] The zoological sense was narrowed to the class Insecta, with six legs and a body of three parts.^[16][11] From 1684 the word was applied contemptuously to an insignificant or despicable person.^[2][12][15] An English verb insect, to cut into, was used in the 17th century,^[2][13] and another, to hunt insects, from 1879.^[2] In Australian slang insect was a jocular word for a horse in 1906.^[17]

Timeline

• 1589 – a member of the class of insects.^[2]
• 1601 – a small invertebrate with a segmented body.^[2][11]
• a1652 – verb, to cut into (obsolete).^[2]
• 1684 – a contemptible person.^[2]
• 1879 – verb, to hunt or catch insects.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A small arthropod of the class Insecta, with a body divided into head, thorax and abdomen, three pairs of legs and usually two pairs of wings, such as a beetle, bee or fly.
2. Loosely, any similar small invertebrate, such as a spider or a tick.
3. A person regarded as insignificant or contemptible.

Word family

• insectarium
• insecticidal
• insecticide
• insectifuge
• insectile
• insectivore
• insectivorous
• insectology

Related words

• entomology
• section
• segment
• dissect

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
11. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ a b Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
13. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
17. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com