| 释义 |
‖ insecta, n. pl.|ɪnˈsɛktə|
[L., pl. of insectum insect; formerly also, more fully, insecta animalia ‘cut-waisted animals’.]
†1. Formerly used as the plural of insect, in its popular application. Obs.
[1577Harrison England iii. vi. (1878) ii. 36 The cut or girt wasted (for so I English the word Insecta) are the hornets, waspes, bees, and such like. 1601Holland Pliny xi. i. 310 Well may they be called Insecta: by reason of those cuts and divisions, which some have about the necke.] 1609C. Butler Fem. Mon. Pref., Of all Insecta the Bees are chief. 1626Bacon Sylva §73 So some Insecta which haue Spirit of Life, as Snakes and Silkewormes, are to the touch Cold. 1648S. Marshall Emmanuel 23 Sometimes the Lord stirres up other creatures to doe it; the Wind, the Sun, the Stars, nay it may be the very insecta animalia..the Rats and Mice, and Frogs, and such poore creatures. 1651Raleigh's Ghost 95 Those living creatures, which are commonly called insecta; as flies, gnats, and the like.
†b. Also erron. insectæ, insecta's. Also fig.: cf. insect n. 3. Obs.
1609B. Jonson Sil. Wom. v. ad fin., Take heed of such insectæ hereafter. 1646J. Hall Poems i. 23 Such Individuums as ye? Such Insecta's. 1650― Paradoxes 25 The rayes of these sunnes will..beget abundance of Insecta's and Monsters. a1658Cleveland Lines Wks. (1687) 354 Such Insecta's, added on To Creatures by Substraction.
2. Zool. (With capital initial.) A class of invertebrate animals; formerly (as by Linnæus) made to comprise the whole of the division now called Arthropoda, or (as by Latreille) all these except the Crustacea and Arachnida; now restricted to that division of these otherwise called Hexapoda, having the body divided or distinguishable into three regions (head, thorax, and abdomen), with six legs (all borne upon the thorax), and usually two or four wings (but in some cases none); constituting the largest class of Arthropoda, and outnumbering all the rest of the animal kingdom, nearly a million species being now known (1988).
1727–41Chambers Cycl., Insects, Insecta, in natural history, a smaller sort of animals. 1819Pantologia, Insecta, Insects, the fifth class in the Linnæan system of Zoology. 1872Nicholson Palæont. 29 The air-breathing classes of the Myriapoda, the Arachnida, and the Insecta or true Insects. 1878Bell Gegenbaur's Comp. Anat. 246 Of pretty much the same form as in the Mandibulate Insecta. |