Hornworm

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A caterpillar of a hawk moth that has a hornlike tail process.
  2. 2
    Some moths in the genus Manduca of the hawk moth family Sphingidae.

    "The project, part of a wave of interest in life-imitating robotics, is a collaboration of seven Tufts faculty members from five departments in the schools of engineering and arts and sciences. Dr. Trimmer comes from the field of neurobiology, where he has been studying the tobacco hornworm, Manduca sexta, since 1990."

Synonyms

All synonyms
hawk mothhawk moth

Example

More examples

"Tom was glad to see that the tomato hornworm on his tomato plant now had the eggs of a parasite attached to its back, because that meant it would soon be dead and no longer eating his tomatoes."

Etymology

From horn + worm.

Related phrases

Manduca quinquemaculataManduca sextatobacco hornwormtomato hornworm

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.