Parasitoid

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Any organism that is parasitic during part of its life cycle, especially one that eventually kills its host.

    "All of these solitary parasitoid wasps that use their sting-ovipositors for stinging prey and depositing eggs are subjected to little predatory pressure from large predators."

Example

More examples

"You're a parasitoid wasp, aren't you?"

Etymology

From parasite + -oid.

Related phrases

parasitoid wasplife cycle

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