bug
Meanings
- An insect of the order Hemiptera (the “true bugs”).
- Any of various species of marine (saltwater or freshwater) crustaceans; e.g. a Moreton Bay bug, mudbug.
- Any insect, or sometimes an arachnid, crustacean, or other arthropod, especially one that is small, terrestrial, or seen as a pest.
- Any minibeast.
- Any insect, arachnid, myriapod or entognath.
- Any insect.
- A bedbug.
- A problem that needs fixing.
- A contagious illness, or a pathogen causing it.
- An enthusiasm for something; an obsession.
- A keen enthusiast or hobbyist.
- A concealed electronic eavesdropping or intercept device
- To annoy.
- To act suspiciously or irrationally, especially in a way that annoys others.
- To install an electronic listening device or devices in.
- To bulge or protrude.
- To represent (a value) using a bug on an instrument.
- An East European river which flows northwest 450 miles through Belarus, Poland and Ukraine into the Baltic Sea. (Western Bug).
- A river in Ukraine (Southern Bug), flowing 530 miles to the Dnieper estuary.
- A Volkswagen Beetle car.
- A Bugatti car.
- Initialism of bisexual until graduation.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
First attested in this form around 1620 (referring to a “bedbug”), from earlier bugge (“beetle”), from Middle English bugge (“scarecrow, hobgoblin”) which is traced alternatively to: * a Celtic root found in Scots bogill (“goblin, bugbear”) and obsolete Welsh bwg (“ghost, hobgoblin”); compare Welsh bwgwl (“threat, fear”) and Middle Irish bocanách (“supernatural being”). * Proto-Germanic *bugja- (“swollen up, thick”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-, *bu- (“to swell”); compare Norwegian bugge (“big man”), dialectal Low German Bögge (“goblin, snot”). * or to a word related to buck and originally referring to a goat-shaped spectre. For the “insect” meaning the assonance with Middle English budde (“beetle”), from Old English budda, from Proto-Germanic *buddô, *buzdô, from the same ultimate source as above, might have played a role. Compare Low German Budde (“louse, grub”), Norwegian budda (“newborn domestic animal”). More at bud. But ultimately this convergence of meaning doesn't prove a conflation of the two terms; they might have existed in parallel since PIE times with similar meanings, even if unnoticed by literary sources. The term is used to refer to technical errors and problems at least as early as the 19th century, predating the commonly known story of a moth being caught in a computer.