woodlouse

Etymology

It is formed from English wood + louse.^[2][3][4][5] According to Etymonline the animal is so called from being found in old wood.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A bedbug: 1598, in J. Mosan's translation of C. Wirsung's Praxis Medicinae, a sense obsolete by 1794.^[2] The crustacean is first named in Cotgrave's French–English dictionary of 1611,^[2][6][7] and Etymonline dates the word to the 1610s.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Besides the isopod crustacean, the name was given to various small creatures found in wood or thought to look like it: a wingless booklouse (1664–1876), termites, first in the Caribbean and later in the United States (from 1666, now rare), ticks and mites (from 1771, chiefly American) and the pill millipede (1826–1919).^[2][7] Etymonline also mentions the termite and the death-watch beetle.^[3] Johnson (1755) quoted Hill's Materia Medica, which describes it as a small insect that rolls itself into a ball and is found under old logs of wood or large stones, and which recommends swallowing woodlice alive as a medicine.^[5] He also quoted Congreve: "Wrap thyself up like a woodlouse, and dream revenge".^[5]

Timeline

• 1598 – a bedbug (obsolete by 1794).^[2]
• 1611 – a small land isopod crustacean.^[2][6]
• 1664 – a wingless booklouse (obsolete by 1876).^[2]
• 1666 – a termite.^[2][7]
• 1771 – a tick or mite.^[2]
• 1826 – a pill millipede (obsolete by 1919).^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. Any of many small land crustaceans of the isopod suborder Oniscidea, with a flattened grey or brown segmented oval body, living in damp places under stones, logs and bark, some of them able to roll into a ball (plural woodlice).^{[8][6][2][9][4]}
2. (US, now rare) A termite.^[2][10]
3. Formerly, a booklouse.^[2][10]

Related words

• wood
• louse

Usage notes

Other names for the animal are sowbug, pill bug and slater;^[8][6] slater is recorded from 1684 in Scotland and northern England, and is also used in Australia and New Zealand.^[4][11]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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 c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
6. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b c Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers
11. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)