flour weevil
- noun
- /flaʊər ˈwiːvəl/
:
gorgojo de la harina
- We had to throw away the whole sack because it was full of flour weevils.
Examples
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A flour weevil can quickly infest a pantry if flour is not stored properly.
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The bakery struggled with a recurring flour weevil problem last summer.
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I found a flour weevil in the pantry.
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The flour weevils have infested our grain storage.
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A flour weevil can quickly infest a pantry if flour is not stored properly.
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The bakery struggled with a recurring flour weevil problem last summer.
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We had to throw away the whole sack because it was full of flour weevils.
Synonyms
15
7.0
A small beetle with a long snout that eats plants or stored grain
1
6.2
A small insect that lives in flour and stored grains and spoils food
A small beetle with a long nose that often damages crops like grain and nuts
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound 'flour weevil' is directly interpretable as a type of weevil associated with flour — a B1 learner who knows 'flour' and 'weevil' can infer it is a small beetle that infests or feeds on flour/stored grains. This noun+noun compounding is a productive, cross-linguistically common pattern, so the overall meaning is predictable from its parts.
Etymology
Flour weevil The noun flour weevil names a small beetle, the weevil, that lives in flour and stored grain. Imagine tiny bugs crawling through a bag of flour and spoiling it, so the name means 'a beetle that infests flour and stored grains'.