Mosquitoes

How to spell mosquitoes

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce mosquitoes

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mosquitoes mean?

1. nounSmall flying insects whose females bite to feed on blood and can spread disease.

Mosquitoes in a sentence

• Mosquitoes swarmed around the campsite after sunset.

• He sprayed repellent to keep the mosquitoes away from the children.

Where does mosquitoes come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

This word comes from Spanish mosquito, a diminutive of mosca meaning 'fly', so the original sense was literally 'little fly'. The Spanish mosca descends in turn from Latin musca, the ordinary word for a fly, which is also the ancestor of the scientific family name and of related Romance words. English borrowed mosquito in the late 1500s, an era when English sailors, traders and colonists were encountering Spanish and Portuguese speakers across the tropics where these biting insects were a constant nuisance. The plural took the -es ending common to many English nouns that end in -o, which is the spot writers most often hesitate over: mosquitoes, not mosquitos. The silent 'qu' pronounced as a simple 'k' sound, inherited straight from the Spanish spelling, is the other trap that keeps this word interesting.

How the word is built

• mosquito (from Spanish, little fly)
• -es (plural ending after final -o)