Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various beetles of the family Scarabaeidae, such as the cockchafer.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A name commonly given to several species of lamellicorn beetles, Scarabæidæ The melancholy rose-chafer, Euphoria melancholica, a familiar example, feeds upon flowers or upon the sap exuded from wounded trees, but in the autumn, and especially in dry seasons, not infrequently attacks and injures ripe fruit of all descriptions, as grapes, figs, and cotton-bolls. The European cockchafer, Melolontha vulgaris, is in habit and position the analogue of the American May-beetle or June-bug.
- n. One who or that which chafes.
- n. A vessel for heating water, food, etc.; a chafing-dish.
- n. Hence Any dish or pan.
- n. A small portable furnace; a chauffer. E. H. Knight. Also chaffer.
Wiktionary
- n. Any of several scarab beetles, including the cockchafer, leaf chafer and rose chafer
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. One who chafes.
- n. A vessel for heating water; -- hence, a dish or pan.
- n. (Zoöl.) A kind of beetle; the cockchafer. The name is also applied to other species.
Etymologies
- Cognate with German Käfer (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, a kind of beetle, from Old English ceafor. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I believe, in contradiction to most etymologists, that the Egyptian scarab, chepera, is our word chafer, French cafard, and possibly Italian scarafaggio.”
“There are 196 species of butterflies (49% of Kwazulu-Natal species), 52 species of dragonflies (23% of South African species), 139 species of dung-beetles, 27 species of hole-nesting wasps, 64 species of biting flies (64% of South African tabanids), 58 species of chafer beetles (cetonids) and 41 species of land snails.”
“The small remaining areas of coastal tussocks, such as Poa astonii, provide habitat for several species with limited distributions including an endemic chafer beetle, Prodontria praelatella.”
“Onions repel aphids, rose chafer beetle and carrot flies, weevils, moles, fruit tree borers it controls rust flies and some nematodes and especially protects tomatoes against red spiders.”
“He let it in, caught it, and it turned out to be a common rose chafer—a beetle closely resembling a golden scarab.”
“I was much pleased to get here the fine long-armed chafer, Euchirus longimanus.”
“Love them, though, that she could! — and she hugged Peterle to her great bosom, which — NICHT WAHR, MEINE LIEBEN? — they would have judged able to nourish the dozen of which she dreamed; whereas, if they could credit it, for her treasure, her well-beloved little cock-chafer, it had yielded not so much as a mouthful.”
“Flying insects have absolutely no tail, and so drift along like a rudderless vessel, and beat against anything they happen upon; and this applies equally to sharded insects, like the scarab-beetle and the chafer, and to unsharded, like bees and wasps.”
“He was about to set off, when the old Indian medicine man came up to him; he had a wondrous salve, he said, prepared from a species of chafer whose odor was intolerable to ants.”
“Mount up there, my little gilded cock-chafer; take hold of this rope's end in your hand.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘chafer’.
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PECH - fishing technology
anchor, berth, drop anchor, anchored floating..., artificial restoc..., bait, beam trawls, bottom gillnets, entangling nets, bottom nets, bottom-set nets, bottom pair trawl and 478 more...
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beetles
beetles
anobiid, beetle, bookworm, borer, bruchid, buprestid, cadelle, canegrub, cantharid, cantharis, carabid, chafer and 117 more...
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Wordnik Spam Inquiries
We get a lot of spam emails at Wordnik that fit this pattern: "Mr Bob Wilson here and i will like to know if you do have X for sale". The words on this list represent a subset of such requested items.
burnisher, shaper vise, salt spreader, soil pulveriser, bible, flutes, baffles, crucifix cross, proofer, gazebo, real bubble wrap, roller tray and 206 more...
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Doctor Faustus
Various words from the play by Christopher Marlowe.
Good Angel, Bad Angel, pride, covetousness, envy, wrath, gluttony, sloth, lechery, vintner, horse-courser, Helen of Troy and 148 more...
Tweets
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