👨‍🌾 A flour maker 🦋 A powdery moth 🛠️ A cutting machine

miller

1 9.9

A small moth with wings that look dusted with flour

noun
/ˈmɪlər/

: polilla

Mill representatives established a hiring office at the university YMCA (the nation's leading "Muscular Christian" organization), and by the end of the week, over 100 students had "donned the white raiment" of the millers and were at work on six-hour shifts.
a dusty miller
a gray miller

Examples

While we were camping, the miller moths fluttered around the lantern, attracted by the light.
As night fell, the miller moths began to appear, their wings coated with a fine dust that made them look almost ethereal.
The dusty Miller is going to go in right here.
Anyway, there's a pink petunia, silver falls, dichondra, dusty Miller, and geranium that is beautiful and striking.
In the garden, small miller moths danced among the flowers, their delicate, powdery wings glistening in the sunlight.

Synonyms

moth miller

vsmiller

Specialized

9.7

A small moth with powdery wings that look like flour dust

is the shorter single-word form for the same moth name

grain moth

vsmiller

7.3

A small insect whose caterpillars eat stored grain and damage food

focuses on powdery wing appearance rather than larval feeding or damage

Compounds

dusty miller

6.7

A garden plant with soft silvery leaves used for decoration

Miller of Dee

Archaic

9.9

A person who is happy with a simple, cheerful life

moth miller

Specialized

9.7

A small moth with powdery wings that look like flour dust

Surface Forms

miller singular

millers plural

Morphology

miller = mill (opaque) = mill + er

Although the form is historically connected to 'mill' + '-er', the moth sense depends on a figurative resemblance rather than a meaning that can be reliably derived from the parts.

Etymology

Miller for a moth comes from the moth's powdery wings that look like they are dusted with 'flour' from a mill, so people called these moths 'millers' because they look as if they carry mill dust.