little black ant
- noun
- US
:
hormiga negra pequeña
- We found a trail of little black ants marching across the kitchen floor.
Examples
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The little black ant is a common household pest during summer months.
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A colony of little black ants had built a nest under the garden stones.
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I saw a little black ant in the garden.
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There are many little black ants in my kitchen.
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A colony of little black ants had built a nest under the garden stones.
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The little black ant is a common household pest during summer months.
-
We found a trail of little black ants marching across the kitchen floor.
Synonyms
A tiny glossy black ant that nests outside and sometimes enters houses for food
How Aggressive
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is a literal adjectival modification: 'little' (small) + 'black' (color) + 'ant' (insect), so its meaning—a small black ant—is directly and transparently derived from the constituents. This is a common, compositional noun phrase pattern cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the three words will understand the MWE.
Etymology
The name little black ant comes from a simple description: people saw very small, shiny ants and called them little, black, and ant. So the name means 'a very small, shiny black ant that often comes into houses looking for food'.