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mosquito

mos·quito

UK/mɒˈskiː.təʊ/ US/məsˈki.toʊ/ fairly common

noun

1.

two-winged insect whose female has a long proboscis to pierce the skin and suck the blood of humans and animals

Origin

Borrowed from Spanish mosquito (“gnat”), diminutive of mosca (“fly”), from Latin musca (“fly”), from Proto-Indo-European *mūs- (“fly, stinging fly, gnat”). Cognate with West Flemish meuzie (“mosquito”), dialectal Swedish mausa (“fly”), Lithuanian musė (“a fly”) and Sicilian muschitta (“midge”). See also midge. First attested in the 1580s.

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WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.