Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of several nocturnal burrowing orthopteran insects of the subfamily Stenopelmatinae, especially Stenopelmatus fuscus of western North America, having a large round head and a striped abdomen.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A large,
flightless insect of thegenus Stenopelmatus, native to the westernUnited States and parts ofMexico — not a true cricket.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun large wingless nocturnal grasshopper that burrows in loose soil along the Pacific coast of the United States
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Perhaps from Jerusalem!, exclamation uttered upon encountering the large insect, or from partial translation during contact between the Navajo and Christian missionaries of Navajo ch’osh bich’ich łichii’, red-skull bug (in reference to the skull-like appearance of its head and the hill of Golgotha outside Jerusalem, whose name is said in the Bible (Mark 15:22) to mean place of a skull) .]
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Examples
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