troglodyte

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a person who lives in a cave, especially a supposed or prehistoric cave-dweller

   Older excavators described the cave's prehistoric inhabitant as a troglodyte.

2. 2
   noun

   a reclusive person or, disparagingly, someone regarded as primitive or resistant to modern ideas

   He jokingly called himself a troglodyte because he avoided phones and social media.

3. 3
   noun

   an animal or other organism that lives underground or in caves

   The blind cave beetle is a highly specialized troglodyte.

Through Latin troglodyta from Greek troglodytes ("one who enters or dwells in holes"), formed from trogle ("hole, cave") + dyein ("to enter"). The figurative insult extends the old image of a cave-dweller.

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