Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An ant.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An ant or emmet.
Wiktionary
- n. regional An ant.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl.) An ant, or emmet.
WordNet 3.0
- n. social insect living in organized colonies; characteristically the males and fertile queen have wings during breeding season; wingless sterile females are the workers
Etymologies
- From Middle English pissemyre, equivalent to piss + mire ("ant"). So called due to the smell of anthills. Compare pissant. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English pissemyre : pisse, urine (from the smell of the formic acid that ants secrete); see piss + mire, ant (probably of Scandinavian origin; akin to Danish myre). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Scared of an Internet troll with a pismire sized brain and an overlarge mouth?”
“Since I am not ready to rule out anything; even the preposterous idea that a pismire may indeed carry off a saw log; I would not absolutely rule out some general correlation between skin color and intelligence.”
“So vast is the disproportion between the sky of law and the pismire of performance under it, that whether he is a man of worth or a sot is not so great a matter as we say.”
“The little pismire tried to have me arrested and confined, but I escaped him using two of my sigils.”
“I saw him as a small-minded pismire, and when he tried to yank, I gnawed chunks out of him.”
“Now we'll see how well you hide, you insolent little pismire!”
“Urad, trembling and sighing at her danger, forgot not to drop one of her peppercorns, and immediately she found herself changed into a pismire, and with great pleasure she looked for a hole in the ground, and crept into it.”
“Urad, perceiving that they were gone, wished herself into her original form, but alas! her wish was not granted, and the once beautiful Urad still continued an ugly pismire.”
“The poison of the little pismire working in their eyes, in a short time occasioned them to awake in the utmost tortures; and perceiving they were blind, and feeling the pain, they each supposed his neighbour had blinded him in order to get away with the booty.”
“Then the little pismire the emote, taking pitty of her great difficulty and labour, cursing the cruellnesse of the daughter of”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pismire’.
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phrontistery - p
from phrontistery.info
pabouche, pabulous, pabulum, pacable, pace, pachydermia, pachyglossal, pachymeter, pachynsis, paciferous, pacificate, pactolian and 1766 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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ants
9,000 species
ant, antlike, emmet, ergataner, ergate, ergatogyne, formicate, kelep, leafcutter, myrmecoid, nasute, pismire and 19 more...
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Forgotten English 1
jacal, mastaba, lucarne, quoin, triglyph, gargarice, nimgimmer, phrenologize, fleam, eaglestone, toad eater, king's evil and 156 more...
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ADW2
nudnik, temper, intercalate, cleave, scowl, chapfallen, malapropos, disport, annals, paean, paradisiacal, whet and 362 more...
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whitmanian
from the poetry and prose of walt whitman
celebrate, assume, loafe, grass, summer, distillation, atmosphere, undisguised, naked, mad, breath, loveroot and 291 more...
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Archaic
Because they just don't make 'em like they used to.
comeling, circuition, assentment, advisement, accompts, apertness, larum, soothfastness, deperdition, marish, covin, tinct and 166 more...
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Not Quite As Awful As They Sound
masticate, absquatulate, adumbrate, afflatus, fetial, anile, bilabial, cineaste, smew, copse, piebald, testudinate and 156 more...
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librarygoblin's words
crystal, ghost, mist, snow, labyrinth, citadel, tomb, mystery, arcane, conundrum, echo, dynamo and 389 more...
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tez's Words
tain, curlicue, eidolon, exoteric, puissant, ragamuffin, insouciant, yarrow, taciturn, mundane, vomitorium, tenebre and 140 more...
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Zoological Terms
Terms used in Zoology
papilionaceous, actinost, gressorial, exuviate, nitid, trochal, demiss, loculus, crebrity, limes, pachytrichous, pachydactyl and 319 more...
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Papageno's Words, Pt. I
hobbledehoy, absquatulate, chthonic, prolix, ululate, internecine, verisimilitude, animadversion, concupiscence, vertiginous, cucullate, lucubrate and 1554 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
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19 c.
some of the interesting words i've had to look up while reading 19th century lit
maugre, connate, alembic, azote, vaticination, valetudinarian, dight, scutcheon, lammergeyer, chamois, asseverate, prebendary and 199 more...
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karnage's Words
furbelow, farinaceous, fendrake, rhizobium, imbricate, quaquaversal, exstasis, grapheme, scissiparity, apterous, obdurant, omphalos and 135 more...
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Words that make you go hmmmm...
Interesting words you probably won't hear in your day-to-day.
maxwell, mooncalf, quagga, glaikit, musquash, lingam, haruspex, qindarka, chthonic, ipomoea, azimuthal, valuta and 305 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pismire.
hernesheir cf. pisant Jan 1, 2009
muamor "He is an angry as a pissemyre,
Though þat he haue al that he kan desire."
Chaucer.
Pismire + ant = pissant. Mar 4, 2008
oroboros See formicate. Jun 21, 2007