Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An animal that characteristically lives commensally in the nest, burrow, or dwelling place of an animal of another species.
- adjective Being or living as an inquiline.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In zoology, an animal that lives in an abode properly belonging to another, either at its expense, as certain insects that live in galls made by the true gall-insects, or merely as a cotenant, as a pea-crab which lives in an oyster-shell, or a sea-anemone growing on a crab's back; a commensal. See cut under
cancrisocial . - Having the character of an inquiline; commensal.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) A gallfly which deposits its eggs in galls formed by other insects.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun biology An
animal that livescommensally in thenest ,burrow ,gall , ordwelling place of an animal of anotherspecies . - noun biology An
organism that lives within areservoir of water collected in thehollow of a plant stem or leaf.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Latin inquilīnus, lodger, tenant : in-, in; see in– + colere, to inhabit; see kwel- in Indo-European roots.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Latin inquilīnus ("tenant, lodger")
Support
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Examples
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A cross-grained trapper with murty odd oogs, awflorated ares, inquiline nase and a twithcherous mouph?
Finnegans Wake 2006
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"The diminutive inquiline snailfish (Liparis inquilinus
Warren Ellis 2008
yarb commented on the word inquiline
As with Leoptothorax, the workers have come to possess three simple eyes, and to take on other queen-like features. The effect on the inquiline has gone further here, however, for the male has lost its wings, and begun to assume the appearance, although apparently not the function, of a worker...
- Caryl P. Haskins, Of Ants and Men, 1939, p. 192
December 17, 2008