Insect

How to spell insect

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce insect

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does insect mean?

1. nounA small invertebrate animal with a segmented body, six legs, and usually one or two pairs of wings.

Insect in a sentence

• A single insect crawled across the kitchen counter.

• The gardener sprayed the roses to control every insect on the leaves.

Where does insect come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin insectum, meaning literally 'cut into' or 'notched', the past participle of insecare, formed from in- 'into' and secare 'to cut'. The name captures the way an insect's body appears divided into segments, as if it had been notched or cut into sections. The Latin term was itself a translation of the Greek entomon, also meaning 'cut up', which is why the study of insects is called entomology. English adopted insect in the early 1600s, around the time naturalists were beginning to classify the natural world systematically. The same secare root cuts through many familiar words, including section, dissect, and segment, and remembering 'sect' as 'cut' explains the spelling.

How the word is built

• in- (in, into)
• sect (cut, from Latin secare 'to cut')