cicada
English
WOTD – 12 August 2015
Alternative forms
Pronunciation
Noun
cicada (plural cicadas or cicadae or (archaic) cicadæ)
- Any of several insects in the superfamily Cicadoidea, with small eyes wide apart on the head and transparent well-veined wings.
- 2012 March-April, Anna Lena Phillips, “Sneaky Silk Moths”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 172:
- Last spring, the periodical cicadas emerged across eastern North America. Their vast numbers and short above-ground life spans inspired awe and irritation in humans—and made for good meals for birds and small mammals.
- The periodical cicada.
- 2011, Robert Evans Snodgrass, Insects: Their Ways and Means of Living, page 217:
- The emergence years of the principal cicada broods have now been recorded for a long time, and the oldest record of a swarm is that of the appearance of the “locusts” in New England two hundred and ninety-five years ago.
- 2013 May 16, Laura Kroon, “Magicidada coming to New Jersey on May 27”, in Hunterdon County Democrat:
- Last year, the Brood I cicadas were found in Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee. The cicadas that will emerge in New Jersey this year are part of Brood II or The East Coast Brood. They will also be found in Connecticut, Maryland, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Hyponyms
- (periodical cicada): seventeen-year locust, decim periodical cicada
Derived terms
Translations
any of several insects of the order Hemiptera
|
See also
Latin
Etymology
Unknown. Probably an onomatopoeic loanword from a lost Mediterranean substrate language.[1] Compare also Sanskrit चिश्चिर (ciścira, “cicada”).
Pronunciation
- cicāda: (Classical) IPA(key): /kiˈkaː.da/, [kɪˈkäːd̪ä]
- cicāda: (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA(key): /t͡ʃiˈka.da/, [t͡ʃiˈkäːd̪ä]
Declension
First-declension noun.
Case | Singular | Plural |
---|---|---|
Nominative | cicāda | cicādae |
Genitive | cicādae | cicādārum |
Dative | cicādae | cicādīs |
Accusative | cicādam | cicādās |
Ablative | cicādā | cicādīs |
Vocative | cicāda | cicādae |
Descendants
- → English: cicada
- → Galician: cicada
- → Macedonian: цикада (cikada)
- → Polish: cykada
- → Romanian: cicadă
- → Russian: цика́да f (cikáda)
- → German: Zikade
Reflexes of the late variant cicāla:
- Balkan Romance:
- Italo-Romance:
- North Italian:
- Gallo-Romance:
- Ibero-Romance:
- Aragonese: zicala
- Mozarabic: [script needed] (čiqâla)
- Insular Romance:
- Sardinian: chicula
Reflexes of an assumed variant *cicār(r)a:
References
- Joan Coromines, José A. Pascual (1984) “cigarra”, in Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico (in Spanish), volumes II (Ce–F), Madrid: Gredos, →ISBN, page 72
- De Vaan, Michiel (2008) Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 112
Further reading
- “cicada”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- “cicada”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
- cicada in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
- cicada in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
- “cicada”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
Romanian
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.