Noun: locust
| Singular | locust |
| Plural | locusts |
Sample Sentences
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Among other articles, they brought with them a great quantity of locusts, which are a kind of pulse, sweet and pleasant to the palate, and in shape resembling French beans, but longer. [1789, Olaudah Equiano, chapter 9, in The Interesting Narrative, volume I:]
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I took my flogging like a stone. If I had sung, some of the convicts would have given me some lush with a locust in it (laudanum hocussing), and when I was asleep would have given me a crack on the head that would have laid me straight. [1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, published 1861:]
Nouns inflected like locust
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *lek-der.?
3. Latin locusta
4. Anglo-Norman locustebor.
5. Middle English locuste
6. English locust
7. Inherited from Middle English locuste, locust, from Anglo-Norman locuste, Middle French locuste, and their source, Latin locustam (“locust, crustacean, lobster”, accusative of locusta). Doublet of langouste.
8. Noun sense 3 (“kind of tree”), originally referring to the carob (compare locust bean), is based on the resemblance of the trees' beanlike seed pods to the insect and is likely a semantic loan from Ancient Greek ἀκρίς (akrís).
9. Noun sense 5 (“mainlander”) is a semantic loan from Cantonese 蝗蟲 /蝗虫 (wong4 cung4), also meaning "locust". See: Middle English Nouns '
locuste', Middle English Nouns '
locuste'.