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James Brown <galliard@shades-of-night.com> wrote:
> Heh... Actually, no. I got chewed out by my sister-in-law for calling them
> all "bugs" - apparantly "bugs" as a term only technically applies to a
> specific class of insect, and not to anything else. The things
> entymologists care about. Sheesh.
Psh. Stupid entomologists.
It's any little creepy crawly gross thing, probably invertebrate. "Insects"
are a definite subset of "bugs".
It's unclear how this meaning came about, but it's very likely a transfer
from the other noun "bug" (the one more related to the verb, as in "quit
bugging me") which is related to scarecrows and hobgoblins and such. (Hence,
"bugbear", "bugaboo".) This earlier sense became obsolete at about the same
time the creepy-crawly-insect-thing meaning developed, although like I said,
the connection is unclear.
If the entomologists have some other sense of the word, I think they've made
it up themselves, and they can't really expect the rest of us to restrict
ourselves for their sake.
--
Matthew Miller ---> mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us ---> http://quotes-r-us.org/
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Policy clarification regarding catalogs
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| (...) Heh... Actually, no. I got chewed out by my sister-in-law for calling them all "bugs" - apparantly "bugs" as a term only technically applies to a specific class of insect, and not to anything else. The things entymologists care about. Sheesh. (...) (25 years ago, 21-Dec-99, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)
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