Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Plural form of hornet.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Dealing with giant hornets is not something they instinctually know of.

    Giant Asian Hornet 2006

  • When the Vespa family are grown up they are called hornets, and Peter and Tom know how hornets sting!

    Little Busybodies The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies Julia Moody 1919

  • The hornets are our most formidable enemy, and the wickedest, and the wasps are

    The Adventures of Maya the Bee Waldemar Bonsels 1919

  • I made my breakfast upon roasted corn and peaches, and then lay down and slept, unmolested, until after twelve o'clock, when I awoke and rose up for the purpose of taking a better view of my quarters; but I was scarcely on my feet, when I was attacked by a swarm of hornets, that issued from a large nest that hung on the limb of a tree, within twenty or thirty feet of me.

    Fifty years in chains, or, The life of an American slave, Charles Ball 1859

  • "We knew at halftime that they were going to come back out and swarm us like hornets, which is what they did," Hidden Valley coach Randy Bush said.

    The Roanoke Times: Home page 2009

  • Bush "ignored 'clear warnings' about the terrorist threat before 9/11 and that it has made Americans less safe by stirring up a 'hornets' nest in Iraq," while using “the language and politics of fear” to try to “drive the public agenda without regard to the evidence, the facts or the public interest.”

    Easter Lemming Liberal News 2007

  • Perhaps and I hate to poke the righties' hornets' nest here the reason so many forced marriages involve muslims is down to the spread of Islam into indiginous cultures?

    FORCED STATISTICS 2009

  • In fact, the month after we ended our 78-day bombardment of the Serbs, then Defense Secretary William Cohen had to cancel a trip to Albania, "to avoid a 'hornets' nest 'of Osama bin Laden operatives," as CNN reported at the time:

    Julia Gorin: Your Tax Dollars at Work: State Dept. Sponsors Top Kosovo Muslim to tell American Muslims: Pray for Kosovo Independence... and spread Islam. 2008

  • Barely twelve meters long, the ships humans had labelled "hornets" were nothing more than a beam weapon and its power pack, with a propulsor and basic life-support system wrapped around it and given some armor and ablative shielding.

    Fearful Symmetry A Terran Empire novel Ann Wilson

  • "Got you into a kind of hornets 'nest, eh?" he observed.

    The Pawns Count 1906

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