cimex

From the genus name Cimex, from Latin cīmex (“bug”). Doublet of chinch.

cimex (plural cimices)

1. Any member of the genus Cimex, especially the bedbug.
   • 1855, Henry G Dalton, The history of British Guiana:

     Some of these cimices are extremely pretty, but if handled emit their disagreeable perfume. I have met with about a dozen species of these bugs.

   • 1967, Merritt E Lawlis, Elizabethan prose fiction:

     There was a poor fellow during my remainder there that, for a new trick he had invented of killing cimices and scorpions, had his mountebank banner hung up...

Unknown origin.

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈkiː.meks/, [ˈkiːmɛks̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃi.meks/, [ˈt͡ʃiːmeks]

cīmex m (genitive cīmicis); third declension

1. bug
2. bedbug

Third-declension noun.

• Balkan Romance:
  • Romanian: cince
• Dalmatian:
  • cinco
• Italo-Romance:
  • Italian: cimice
  • Neapolitan: pimmece
  • Sicilian: cimicia
• Padanian:
  • Emilian: samze, semze ⇒ semza, simza, sümesa
  • Lombard: simes, sumas, sisme, sùmec, sumèc, sìmec ⇒ sumèga, simèga
  • Piedmontese: sims, simis, simes, sums
  • Romagnol: semze, semz ⇒ semza
• Gallo-Romance:
  • Old Catalan: címeu
  • Occitan: címec, cimèc, cìmet, cime, cimze, cindre, cimi, cime, çumi
• Ibero-Romance: f
  • Mozarabic: *činče (see there for further descendants)
  • Old Spanish: çisme
    • Spanish: chisme
  • Portuguese: chisme
• Insular Romance:
  • Sardinian: chìmighe
• Borrowings:
• → Albanian: qimqë
• → Basque: zimitz
• → English: cimex
• → Esperanto: cimo
• → Translingual: Cimex

• “cimex”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “cimex”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• cimex in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.