pea weevil
- noun
- /piː ˈwiːvəl/
- Specialized
:
gorgojo de los guisantes
- After inspecting the damaged peas, the agronomist identified the pests as pea weevils.
Examples
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The farmer noticed that the crops were infested with pea weevils, which were damaging the plants.
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To prevent infestations, farmers must regularly check for pea weevils in their fields.
-
How does a pea weevil, hatched inside a pea, know to climb out when it's never seen the world?
Synonyms
A small beetle whose young feed inside pea seeds
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a beetle that infests peas' is directly and transparently derivable from combining 'pea' (the plant/seed) with 'weevil' (a beetle that feeds on plants). This compound-noun naming pattern is common and cross-linguistically regular, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents should be able to infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Pea weevil comes from the simple image of tiny beetles that get inside pea seeds and whose young live there and eat the peas. Farmers often opened damaged peas and found the insects inside, so the name links pea (the seed) and weevil (a beetle) and now means 'a small beetle that damages pea crops'.
