wasp

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“
He enlisted a powerful army, ninety thousand strong, and marched away to the field of Cannæ, where Hannibal was encamped, with the purpose of driving this Carthaginian wasp from the Italian fields.

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Definitions (13)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. noun Any of numerous social or solitary insects, chiefly of the superfamilies Vespoidea and Sphecoidea, having a slender body with a constricted abdomen, two pairs of membranous wings, mouths adapted for biting or sucking, and in the females an ovipositor often modified as a sting.

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Examples (50)

  • If the colonists had been used like the wasp -- but not immobilized -- it might explain the destructive spree they went on before they died. —  F ;SF; - vol 091 issue 03 - September 1996
  • I thought the wasp was a bit of leftover energy bar wedged in behind a tooth - only as I bit into it (crunch) did I realise what was going on. —  Ben Saunders
  • There is a small parasitic wasp which is very helpful in destroying this caterpillar. —  An Elementary Study of Insects
  • When the wasp was at liberty, I expected the spider would have set about repairing the breaches that were made in its net, but those it seems were irreparable; wherefore the cobweb was now entirely forsaken, and a new one begun, which was completed in the usual time I had now a mind to try how many cobwebs a single spider could furnish; wherefore I destroyed this, and the insect set about another. —  The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II
  • While the wasp was absent, I stopped the entrance with a pellet of paper, and, when the little housekeeper returned, she was nonplussed for a moment or two, when she discovered that her doorway had been closed. —  The Dawn of Reason or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals
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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English waspe, from Old English wæps, wæsp.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Also dial, waps, wops (and wop); from Middle English waspe, from Anglo-Saxon wæsp, wæps, found also in the form wæfs in an early gloss, = Dutchwesp = Middle Low German wespe = Old High German wefsa, Middle High German wefse, wasp (cf. Middle High German wespe, vespe, German wespe, Danish vespe, a wasp, from L.), = Latin vespa, a wasp, = Lithuanian wapsa, a gadfly, horsefly, = Russian osa, a wasp (cf. OP. guespe, French guêpe, from Middle High German wespe); with formative -s, perhaps from ✓wap, sting (cf. English wap, strike). The word has apparently nothing to do with Greek σφήξ, a wasp (with which cf. Gael, speach, a wasp, speach, bite).
 

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/wɑsp/
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