bedbug

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a small, flat, nocturnal insect that hides near sleeping places and feeds on the blood of people or other warm-blooded animals

   The traveler found a bedbug in the seam of the hotel mattress.

2. 2
   noun

   any blood-feeding insect of the family Cimicidae, including the common and tropical bedbugs

   The biologist identified the specimen as a bedbug adapted to feeding on bats.

A compound of bed + bug, named for the insect's habit of hiding in beds and emerging at night to feed. Bug is of uncertain origin in English and once referred broadly to frightening or troublesome things before becoming a common term for insects.

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