Parasite

How to spell parasite

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce parasite

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does parasite mean?

1. nounAn organism that lives on or in a host of another species, drawing nourishment from it and often harming it.
2. nounA person who habitually relies on others for support and gives nothing useful in return.

Parasite in a sentence

• The tapeworm is a parasite that lives inside the intestine.

• His colleagues called him a parasite for taking credit while doing no work.

• The vet checked the dog for any parasite in its fur.

• The tenant behaved like a parasite, living rent free for months.

Where does parasite come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek parasitos, which literally meant 'one who eats beside another', from para 'beside' and sitos 'grain, food'. In ancient Greece the parasitos began as a respectable figure, an official who shared meals at a temple or public table, but the term soon soured into a label for a flatterer who lived off the hospitality of the wealthy by amusing them at dinner. Latin borrowed the word as parasitus, and it entered English in the sixteenth century through French, at first carrying that social sense of a fawning sponger. Only in the eighteenth century did naturalists adopt it for plants and animals that feed on a living host, the meaning most people reach for today. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: that 'si' is a quiet schwa, so 'para-suh-site' tempts writers toward an a or e where the i belongs.

How the word is built

• para- (beside, alongside)
• sit (food, grain, from Greek sitos)
• -e