Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various plant-eating scarab beetles, such as the rose chafer.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who or that which chafes.
  • noun A vessel for heating water, food, etc.; a chafing-dish.
  • noun Hence Any dish or pan.
  • noun A small portable furnace; a chauffer. E. H. Knight. Also chaffer.
  • noun A name commonly given to several species of lamellicorn beetles, Scarabæidæ

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) A kind of beetle; the cockchafer. The name is also applied to other species.
  • noun One who chafes.
  • noun A vessel for heating water; -- hence, a dish or pan.

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

  • noun Any of several scarab beetles, including the cockchafer, leaf chafer and rose chafer

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, a kind of beetle, from Old English ceafor.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Cognate with German Käfer

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word chafer.

Examples

  • I believe, in contradiction to most etymologists, that the Egyptian scarab, chepera, is our word chafer, French cafard, and possibly Italian scarafaggio.

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol III No 3 1976

  • There are 196 species of butterflies (49% of Kwazulu-Natal species), 52 species of dragonflies (23% of South African species), 139 species of dung-beetles, 27 species of hole-nesting wasps, 64 species of biting flies (64% of South African tabanids), 58 species of chafer beetles (cetonids) and 41 species of land snails.

    Greater St Lucia Wetland Park, South Africa 2008

  • Onions repel aphids, rose chafer beetle and carrot flies, weevils, moles, fruit tree borers it controls rust flies and some nematodes and especially protects tomatoes against red spiders.

    Organic Gardening: Companion Planting 2007

  • The small remaining areas of coastal tussocks, such as Poa astonii, provide habitat for several species with limited distributions including an endemic chafer beetle, Prodontria praelatella.

    Southland temperate forests 2007

  • He let it in, caught it, and it turned out to be a common rose chafer—a beetle closely resembling a golden scarab.

    ENTANGLED MINDS DEAN RADIN 2006

  • He let it in, caught it, and it turned out to be a common rose chafer—a beetle closely resembling a golden scarab.

    ENTANGLED MINDS DEAN RADIN 2006

  • He let it in, caught it, and it turned out to be a common rose chafer—a beetle closely resembling a golden scarab.

    ENTANGLED MINDS DEAN RADIN 2006

  • I was much pleased to get here the fine long-armed chafer, Euchirus longimanus.

    The Malay Archipelago 2004

  • Love them, though, that she could! — and she hugged Peterle to her great bosom, which — NICHT WAHR, MEINE LIEBEN? — they would have judged able to nourish the dozen of which she dreamed; whereas, if they could credit it, for her treasure, her well-beloved little cock-chafer, it had yielded not so much as a mouthful.

    Two Tales of Old Strasbourg 2003

  • Flying insects have absolutely no tail, and so drift along like a rudderless vessel, and beat against anything they happen upon; and this applies equally to sharded insects, like the scarab-beetle and the chafer, and to unsharded, like bees and wasps.

    On the Gait of Animals 2002

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.