assassin bug
noun
Simple meaning
A true bug: long-legged predacious bug living mostly on other insects.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
uhsasuhnbuhgSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
əˈsæsənˈbʌɡ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A true bug: long-legged predacious bug living mostly on other insects; a few suck blood of mammals
Any true bug from the subfamily Reduviinae of the family Reduviidae, all of which eat other insects. They can inflict a very painful bite, but don't cause disease.
Any true bug from any of the subfamilies of the Reduviidae, including those in the subfamily Triatominae, which suck blood and may transmit Chagas' disease to humans.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: A true bug: long-legged predacious bug living mostly on other insects; a few suck blood of mammals
Used this way, assassin bug is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.