Insectivore
//ɪnˈsɛktəˌvɔː// noun
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 Insect-eating animal or plant.
"An anteater is an insectivore with a long sticky tongue to catch its prey."
- 2 any organism that feeds mainly on insects wordnet
- 3 mammal of the now abandoned order Insectivora. dated
- 4 small insect-eating mainly nocturnal terrestrial or fossorial mammals wordnet
Example
More examples"An anteater is an insectivore with a long sticky tongue to catch its prey."
Etymology
From French insectivore. In the zoological sense, coined by English philosopher and historian of science William Whewell in 1840 as an adaptation of Cuvier's coinage, French insectivore. The French terms reflect scientific New Latin origins. By surface analysis, insect + -i- + -vore.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.