insect

Any of numerous arthropod animals of the class Insecta, having an adult stage characterized by three pairs of legs and a body segmented into head, thorax, and abdomen and usually having one or two pairs of wings. Insects include the flies, crickets, mosquitoes, beetles, butterflies, and bees.

Any of various other small, chiefly arthropod animals, such as spiders, centipedes, or ticks, usually having many legs. Not in scientific use.

An insignificant or contemptible person.

A small, usually winged and many-legged, invertebrate creature whose body appears to consist of several segments: a term used in popular speech without exactitude, being applied not only to flies, fleas, dragon-flies, butterflies, moths, bees, wasps, crickets, grasshoppers, roaches, beetles, bugs, lice, and other familiar creatures properly called insects, but also, improperly, to other small creatures whose structure and relations are not popularly understood, as the so-called coral insect, which is an actinozoan.

In zoology, any member of the class or other division of animals called Insecta; an arthropod; a condylopod; an articulated animal with articulated legs, especially one with six such legs; a hexapod. See Insecta and Hexapoda, 1.

Of, pertaining to, or of the nature of an insect or insects: as, insect transformations; insect architecture.

Like an insect in any respect; small; mean; contemptible.

To seek or catch insects, as a bird does.

Of or pertaining to an insect or insects.