# mosquito

Pronunciation: US say "muh-SKEE-toh" /məˈski.toʊ/; UK say "mo-SKEE-toh" /mɒˈskiː.təʊ/

## Noun

1. A small flying insect of the family Culicidae whose females bite humans and animals to suck blood, leaving an itching bump and sometimes spreading diseases such as malaria, dengue, and yellow fever.
   - Simple: A small flying insect that bites people and animals and sucks their blood, leaving an itchy bump.
   - _A single mosquito kept me awake half the night with its high-pitched whine._
   - _The campers swatted at mosquitoes as the sun went down over the lake._

## Other meanings

- (verb) To fly low over the ground in a wandering way, without following a set course.

## Origin

Borrowed from Spanish mosquito ("gnat"), the diminutive of mosca ("fly"), which comes from Latin musca ("fly") and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *mūs- ("fly, stinging fly, gnat"). It is first recorded in English in the later 1500s.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/mosquito (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).