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Wasp   /wɑsp/   Listen
noun
Wasp  n.  (Zool.) Any one of numerous species of stinging hymenopterous insects, esp. any of the numerous species of the genus Vespa, which includes the true, or social, wasps, some of which are called yellow jackets. Note: The social wasps make a complex series of combs, of a substance like stiff paper, often of large size, and protect them by a paperlike covering. The larvae are reared in the cells of the combs, and eat insects and insect larvae brought to them by the adults, but the latter feed mainly on the honey and pollen of flowers, and on the sweet juices of fruit.
Digger wasp, any one of numerous species of solitary wasps that make their nests in burrows which they dig in the ground, as the sand wasps. See Sand wasp, under Sand.
Mud wasp. See under Mud.
Potter wasp. See under Potter.
Wasp fly, a species of fly resembling a wasp, but without a sting.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wasp" Quotes from Famous Books



... perfect organ, the eye. If our reason leads us to admire with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable contrivances in nature, this same reason tells us, though we may easily err on both sides, that some other contrivances are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes the death of the insect by tearing out ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... liquor contain'd in the small baggs or bladders, upon which grow out those sharp Syringe-pipes, as I before noted; and very consonant to this, is the reason of the pain created by the sting of a Bee, Wasp, &c. as I elsewhere shew: For by the Dart, which is likewise a pipe, is made a deep passage into the skin, and then by the anger of the Fly, is his gally poisonous liquor injected; which being admitted ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... Alexander, when Mr. Falconbridge had been the surgeon of her. Three came to me who had been ill-used in the voyage which followed, though she had then sailed under a new captain. Two applied to me from the Africa, who had been of her crew in the last voyage. Two from the Fly. Two from the Wasp. One from the Little Pearl, and three from the Pilgrim or Princess, when she ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... Wasp" is a headline in a contemporary. We have not read the article, but our own plan with wasps is to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various

... enter into very minute descriptions of the honeycomb, as all my readers are doubtless perfectly familiar with its appearance. Each cell, like that made by the wasp, is hexagonal, and the cells are put together in a manner which secures the greatest strength for the least possible material. Kirby and Spence state that "Maraldi found that the great angles were generally 10 degrees 28 minutes, and the smaller ones ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various


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