Etymologically
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insect

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈɪn.sɛkt/[1]

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

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