Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A cicada.
- noun [capitalized] A genus of Acridiidæ, or short-horned grasshoppers, typical of the subfamily Tettiginæ, and having the pronotum horizontal and the antennæ thirteen- or fourteen-jointed. Nine species are known in the United States.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.), Obs. or R. The cicada.
- noun (Zoöl.) A genus of small grasshoppers.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun a
cicada , especially in Greece
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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And of insects some are derived from insect congeners, as the venom-spider and the common-spider from the venom-spider and the common-spider, and so with the attelabus or locust, the acris or grasshopper, and the tettix or cicada.
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The tettix or cicada, alone of such creatures (and, in fact, alone of all creatures), is unprovided with a mouth, but it is provided with the tongue-like formation found in insects furnished with frontward stings; and this formation in the cicada is long, continuous, and devoid of any split; and by the aid of this the creature feeds on dew, and on dew only, and in its stomach no excretion is ever found.
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Archons of Athens, topped by the tettix, see, I return!
Graded Poetry: Seventh Year Various
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Cephissus, where in the starlit night the tettix (4) in the black old olives by the stream made its monotonous music, where great fireflies gleamed, where Philomela the nightingale called, and the tall plane trees whispered softly to the pines.
A Victor of Salamis William Stearns Davis 1903
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[1679] Fialon, quoting the well known ode of Anakreon, "makarizomen se tettix," and Plato's theory of the affection of grasshoppers and the muses in the Phaedrus, contrasts the "cantu querulae rumpent arbusta cicadae" of Vergil (George.iii. 328) and points out that the Romans did not share the Greek admiration for the grasshopper's song.
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Nay, if he can only get his music by breaking the strings of his lute, he breaks them, and they snap in discord, and no Athenian tettix, making melody from tremulous wings, lights on the ivory horn to make the movement perfect, or the interval less harsh.
Intentions Oscar Wilde 1877
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Athenian tettix, making melody from tremulous wings, lights on the ivory horn to make the movement perfect, or the interval less harsh.
Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde 1877
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Archons° of Athens, topped by the tettix, ° see, I return!
Browning's Shorter Poems Robert Browning 1850
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Rulers. = tettix =, the grasshopper, whose image symbolized old age, and was worn by the senators of Athens.
Browning's Shorter Poems Robert Browning 1850
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Archons of Athens, topped by the tettix, see, I return!
Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning Robert Browning 1850
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