# wasp

Pronunciation: US say "WAHSP" /wɑsp/; UK say "WOSP" /wɒsp/

## Noun

1. A winged insect with a narrow waist and usually a sting, especially the familiar black-and-yellow kind that builds paper nests; more broadly, any related insect that is not a bee or an ant.
   - Simple: A flying insect with a thin waist, often black and yellow, that can sting. Many related insects are also called wasps.
   - _We moved the picnic indoors after a wasp kept circling the table._
   - _The gardener was stung twice while clearing a wasps' nest from under the shed roof._

## Noun · WASP

2. Short for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant: a white American with Protestant and usually British roots, often from a rich, powerful family. *(US)*
   - Simple: Short form of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, a person from the group said to run America.
   - _The novel skewers the WASP establishment of 1950s Boston, with its country clubs and quiet snobbery._
   - _He was the kind of WASP who summered in Maine and never discussed money._

## Other meanings

- (noun) Short for Women Airforce Service Pilots: the World War II program of US civilian women who flew military aircraft at home, or one of its members.
- (noun) A person who behaves angrily or insolently, ready to snap at others.
- (verb) To move about like a wasp, or to buzz like one.

## Origin

The word goes back to *wóbʰseh₂, the Proto-Indo-European word for "wasp," which came from *webʰ- ("to weave"), a name that points to the insect's woven nests. It passed through Proto-Germanic *wapsō and Proto-West Germanic *wapsu to Old English wæsp or wæps and then to Middle English wasp, waspe, or waps. Dutch wesp, German Wespe, Danish hveps, and Latin vespa are comparable words. English grasp shows the same switch between the s and p sounds.

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