mosquito

CEFRB1

/mɒˈskiː.təʊ/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A small flying insect whose female bites people and animals.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    A settlement in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Examples

  • I got a lot of mosquito bites.

  • I've got mosquito bites all over my arm.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
4
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5
Synonyms
3

Also pronounced

  • [-t̞ə]
  • [məˈs̠kɪt̞o]

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. To fly close to the ground, seemingly without a course.

  2. A small flying insect of the family Culicidae, the females of which bite humans and animals and suck blood, leaving an itching bump on the skin, and sometimes carrying diseases like malaria, dengue and yellow fever.

More examples

In context

  • We lit a driftwood fire to help keep the mosquitoes away. It was partially successful.

  • I do not quite know what it was that made me poke my head out of the friendly shelter of the blanket, perhaps because I found that the mosquitoes were biting right through it.

  • Nicaragua has been investigating the possibility that the 1985 outbreak of dengue fever along its Honduran border may have resulted from the release of infected mosquitos by U.S. reconnaissance overflights.

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The buzzing blank bit her arm and left a small itchy red bump.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

Borrowed from Spanish mosquito (“gnat”), diminutive of mosca (“fly”), from Latin musca (“fly”), from Proto-Indo-European *mūs- (“fly, stinging fly, gnat”). Cognate with West Flemish meuzie (“mosquito”), dialectal Swedish mausa (“fly”), Lithuanian musė (“a fly”) and Sicilian muschitta (“midge”). See also midge. First attested in the 1580s.