weevil

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“
The pea weevil is the largest of our Bruchidae.

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Definitions (44)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. noun Any of numerous beetles, of the superfamily Curculionoidea, especially the snout beetle, that characteristically have a downward-curving snout and are destructive to nuts, fruits, stems, and roots.

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Examples (50)

  • Difficult to make a plant that fights off the weevil, the leafcurl rust, the soil bacterium which chew through their roots… so many blights plague us now, so many beasts assail our plantings, but come now, what, best of all, do we like about SoyPRO? —  Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction 23rd Annual Collection (2006)
  • He always had been a weevil, and now he was littering up my domestic life as well. —  Two For The Lions
  • Difficult to make a plant that fights off the weevil, the leafcurl rust, the soil bacterium which chew through their roots ... so many blights plague us now, so many beasts assail our plantings, but come now, what, best of all, do we like about SoyPRO? —  FSF,October2005
  • The microscopic weevil, a native to Brazil, feeds only on the salvinia plant. —  thenewsstar.com - Local News
  • There was at this time too a great surplus of labor throughout those sections affected by the boll-weevil, floods, and shortage of cars, which was ready to respond to this demand. —  The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921
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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English wevel, from Old English wifel; see webh- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Early modern English also weavil, weavel, wivel; from Middle English wevel, wivel, wevyl, wyvel, from Anglo-Saxon wifel, in an early gloss wibil, a beetle (cf. wibba in scærn-wibba, dung-beetle), = Old Saxon wivil = Middle Low German wevel = Dutch wevel = Old High German wibil, wibel. Middle High German wibel, German wiebel, wibel, a weevil, = Ieel. yfill (in comp. tord-yfill, dung-beetle).
 

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/ˈwivl/
by American Heritage
by Steve de Brun
by topherdan1

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