chinch bug
- noun
- /ˈʧɪnʧ bʌg/
- Specialized
:
chinche
- "And during my emptiest moments when I felt the worst about myself, damn if I wouldn't see one of those chinch bug shells that used to litter the lawn of my childhood home.
Examples
-
You can identify chinch bugs by looking for small, black-and-white insects on the grass.
-
But I am studying this stuff, so I know it... you know... like... ...chinch bugs.
-
The chinch bug is known for damaging cereal grasses in many agricultural fields.
-
Farmers often use pesticides to protect their crops from chinch bugs.
Synonyms
A small black-and-white insect that eats grain plants and damages crops
Surface Forms
Morphology
chinch + bug
The modifier 'chinch' is not a transparent English lexical item (and is listed as not found), so even if a learner knows 'bug' they cannot derive the specific sense of a cereal-grass pest from the parts. This is a lexicalized species name whose meaning is not compositionally predictable from its constituents, making it opaque to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Chinch bug probably comes from the Spanish word chinche, which means 'bedbug', because this small bug looks like a tiny bedbug and bites plants. So, chinch bug now means a small black-and-white bug that eats wheat and other grasses and can damage crops.
