bug
/bʌɡ/ noun, verb, proper noun
Also a form of bog
Forms bugs bugging bugged the Bug bugg Buh
- noun (entomology) An insect of the order Hemiptera (the “true bugs”).
- noun (informal, proscribed) Any motile small terrestrial invertebrate, especially one that is seen as a pest. “These flies are a bother. I’ll get some bug spray and kill them.”
- noun (informal) Any minibeast.
- noun Any insect. “A: Eew, what is that thing?! Is that a bug?! B: No, it's a spider. And don't worry: she's not gonna hurt you.”
- noun Any of various species of marine (saltwater or freshwater) crustaceans; e.g. a Moreton Bay bug, mudbug.
- noun (paleontology, slang) A trilobite.
- noun (Maine) A lobster.
- noun (UK, obsolete, specifically) A bedbug.
- verb (informal, transitive) To annoy. “Don’t bug me, I’m busy!”
- verb (informal, intransitive) To act suspiciously or irrationally, especially in a way that annoys others. “I'm worried about Wallace. He's been buggin' all week.”
- verb (transitive) To install an electronic listening device or devices in. “We need to know what’s going on. We’ll bug his house.”
- verb (intransitive, of eyes) To bulge or protrude.
- verb (transitive) To represent (a value) using a bug on an instrument.
- proper noun An East European river which flows northwest 450 miles through Belarus, Poland and Ukraine into the Baltic Sea. (Western Bug).
- proper noun A river in Ukraine (Southern Bug), flowing 530 miles to the Dnieper estuary.
- noun (US, slang) A Volkswagen Beetle car.
- noun (slang) A Bugatti car.
Synonyms
defect glitch wire bog bogey bogle boggle boggard bugbear oil bug bug boy union bug Beetle hemipterous insect hemipteran hemipteron microbe germ tease badger pester beleaguer wiretap tap intercept
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-West Germanic *buʀdō, from Proto-Germanic *buzdô, from the same ultimate source as above, might have played a role. Compare Low German Budde (“louse, grub”), Norwegian budda (“newborn domestic animal”), Icelandic budda (“purse”). 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.
From the Slavic hydronym *bugъ /*buga.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A bugbear; anything which terrifies. [Obs.]
- noun A general name applied to various insects belonging to the Hemiptera; as, the squash bug; the chinch bug, etc.
Etymology [OE. bugge, fr. W. bwg, bwgan, hobgoblin, scarecrow, bugbear. Cf. Bogey, Boggle.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “bug”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details