Definitions

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

  • noun Any of very many four-winged insects, of the order Orthoptera, such as grasshoppers, crickets and locusts

Etymologies

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Examples

  • For all the confusion they might inspire, I love the stridulations of orthoptera (their technical name that means "rigid winged").

    Country diary 2010

  • Like several other orthoptera, including the wonderfully named long-winged conehead, the bush cricket is on a northward march, possibly as a consequence of climate change.

    Country diary 2010

  • I can—I will—no longer tolerate your repeated denomination of me as a member of that vexatious order of orthoptera known scientifically as Gryllus domesticus.

    Nevermore Harold Schechter 1999

  • These insects belong among the orthoptera -- an order including species whose transformations are less complete than in other groups, and whose larval and pupal forms are very active, and closely resemble the imago.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 Various

  • We are singularly rich in orthoptera: I don't know whether -- Ah! you have got hold of that glass jar -- - you are looking into that instead of my drawers.

    Middlemarch: a study of provincial life (1900) 1871

  • We are singularly rich in orthoptera: I don't know whether -- Ah! you have got hold of that glass jar -- you are looking into that instead of my drawers.

    Middlemarch George Eliot 1849

  • Please to tell me where I can find any account of the auditory organs in the orthoptera?

    More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 2 Charles Darwin 1845

  • I feel great difficulty in conceiving by what natural process an insect with a suctorial mouth, like that of a gnat or butterfly, could be developed from a powerfully mandibulate type like the orthoptera, or even from the neuroptera ...

    More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1 Charles Darwin 1845

  • -- The _Phasmidæ_ or spectres, another class of orthoptera, present as close a resemblance to small branches or leafless twigs as their congeners do to green leaves.

    Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon James Emerson Tennent 1836

  • [Footnote 1: _M. aridifolia_ and _M. extensicollis_, as well as _Empusa gongyloides_, remarkable for the long leaf-like head, and dilatations on the posterior thighs, are common in the island.] _The Stick-insect_ -- The _Phasmidoe_ or spectres, another class of orthoptera, present as close a resemblance to small branches or leafless twigs as their congeners do to green leaves.

    Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History, Antiquities and Productions, Volume 1 (of 2) James Emerson Tennent 1836

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