mosquito

Borrowed from Spanish mosquito (“gnat”), diminutive of mosca (“fly”), from Latin musca (“fly”), from Proto-Indo-European *mūs- (“fly, stinging fly, gnat”). Cognate with West Flemish meuzie (“mosquito”), dialectal Swedish mausa (“mosquito”), Lithuanian musė (“a fly”) and Sicilian muschitta (“midge”). See also midge.

• (US) IPA^(key): /məˈski.toʊ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /mɒˈskiː.təʊ/

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

• (Canada) IPA^(key): /məˈskiːto/
  • (Ottawa Valley) IPA^(key): [məˈskiːɾ̥o], [məˈskɪto]
• Rhymes: -iːtəʊ

mosquito (plural mosquitos or mosquitoes)

1. A small flying insect of the family Culicidae, the females of which bite humans and animals and suck blood, leaving an itching bump on the skin, and sometimes carrying diseases like malaria, dengue and yellow fever.

   Synonym: (US, informal) skeeter

   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

     I do not quite know what it was that made me poke my head out of the friendly shelter of the blanket, perhaps because I found that the mosquitoes were biting right through it.

   • 1941 March 12, Charles A. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, published 1970, page 461:

     We lit a driftwood fire to help keep the mosquitoes away. It was partially successful.

• Diminutive: mossie/mozzie (Australia, UK) or skeeter (US)

• → Cornish: moskito
• Jamaican Creole: maskitta

mosquito (third-person singular simple present mosquitos, present participle mosquitoing, simple past and past participle mosquitoed)

1. To fly close to the ground, seemingly without a course.

• IPA^(key): /mosˈkito/ [mos̺ˈki.t̪ʊ]
• Rhymes: -ito
• Hyphenation: mos‧qui‧to

mosquito m (plural mosquitos)

1. mosquito

mosquito m (plural mosquiti)

1. mosquito

From mosca, mosco (“fly”) +‎ -ito.

• IPA^(key): /mosˈkito/

mosquito m (plural mosquitos)

1. Diminutive of mosca; a mosquito.
   • c. 1250, Alfonso X, Lapidario, f. 107v:

     […] ſera aguardado del danno delos moſquitos. ⁊ de todas maneras de moſcas que seã pozonadas o mordedores. / Et eſto es mas deſcendiẽdo ſobreſta piedra la ũtud de fig̃a de moſq̃to, o de alguna deſtas otras moſcas que dixiemos.

     […] he will be kept from the harm of mosquitos and all manners of flies that are venomous or that bite. And this will happen more when over this stone descends the virtue of the figure of the mosquito, or that of another one of the flies we mentioned.

• Spanish: mosquito
  • → English: mosquito

From mosca +‎ -ito.

• Hyphenation: mos‧qui‧to

mosquito m (plural mosquitos)

1. mosquito

   Synonym: (regional) muriçoca

• mosquiteiro

• → Hunsrik: Muskitt

From mosca +‎ -ito (diminutive suffix), or Old Spanish moquito. Cognate with Sicilian muschitta (“midge”).

• IPA^(key): /mosˈkito/ [mosˈki.t̪o]

• Audio (Colombia):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ito
• Syllabification: mos‧qui‧to

mosquito m (plural mosquitos)

1. mosquito

   Synonyms: zancudo, (Mexico) moyote, cénzalo

2. gnat
3. (Mexico, colloquial) trimmer
4. (literal) Diminutive of mosco (“small fly”)

• → Belarusian: маскі́т (maskít)
• → Dutch: muskiet
  • Afrikaans: muskiet
  • Berbice Creole Dutch: maskiti
  • Negerhollands: moeskit, moskite, muskit, moskit
  • → Sranan Tongo: maskita
    • → Caribbean Hindustani: maskitá
    • → Caribbean Javanese: maskitah
• → Esperanto: moskito
• → English: mosquito
  • → Cornish: moskito
  • Jamaican Creole: maskitta
• → Estonian: moskiito
• → French: moustique (with metathesis)
• → German: Moskito
• →⇒ Icelandic: moskítófluga
• → Latvian: moskīts
• → Norman: moustique (with metathesis)
• → Russian: моски́т (moskít)
  • → Yiddish: מאָסקיט (moskit)
• → Ukrainian: москі́т (moskít)

• jején m

• “mosquito”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014