mosquito
pronunciation
How to pronounce mosquito in British English:
UK [məˈskiːtəʊ]
How to pronounce mosquito in American English:
US [məˈskiːtoʊ]
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- Noun:
- two-winged insect whose female has a long proboscis to pierce the skin and suck the blood of humans and animals
Word Origin
- mosquito
- mosquito: [16] Mosquito comes ultimately from the Latin word for ‘fly’, musca (this went back to an Indo-European base *mu-, probably imitative of the sound of humming, which also produced English midge [OE], and hence its derivative midget [19] – originally a ‘tiny sand-fly’). Musca became Spanish mosca, whose diminutive form reached English as mosquito – etymologically a ‘small fly’. (The Italian descendant of musca, incidentally, is also mosca, and its diminutive, moschetto, was applied with black humour to the ‘bolt of a crossbow’. From it English gets musket [16].)=> midge, midget, musket
- mosquito (n.)
- 1580s, from Spanish mosquito "little gnat," diminutive of mosca "fly," from Latin musca "fly," from PIE root *mu- "gnat, fly," imitative of insect buzzing (compare Sanskrit maksa-, Greek myia, Old English mycg, Modern English midge, Old Church Slavonic mucha), perhaps imitative of the sound of humming insects.
Example
- 1. I 've got a mosquito bite on my tattoo .
- 2. The combination of oil and fungal spores killed up to 50 percent more mosquito larvae than untreated spores .
- 3. More information on avoiding mosquito bites can be found in the university of sydney 's repellent guidelines .
- 4. Being a mosquito can really suck .
- 5. A single raindrop can weigh 50 times as much as a mosquito .