flea

en-noun

flea (plural fleas or (archaic or UK dialectal) fleen)

fleas (plural)
fleen (UK archaic dialectal plural)

From Middle English fle, from Old English flēah, flēa, from Proto-West Germanic *flauh, from Proto-Germanic *flauhaz (compare West Frisian flie, Low German Flo, Flö, Dutch vlo, German Floh, Icelandic fló), from pre-Germanic *plóukos, *plówkos, from or akin to Proto-Indo-European *plúsis (compare Latin pulex, Sanskrit प्लुषि (plúṣi)).
The archaic plural fleen is from Middle English fleen, flen, from Old English flēan (“fleas”).

A small, wingless, parasitic insect of the order Siphonaptera, renowned for its bloodsucking habits and jumping abilities.


flea

en-verb

flea (third-person singular simple present fleas, present participle fleaing, simple past and past participle fleaed)

fleas (present singular third-person)
fleaing (participle present)
fleaed (participle past)
fleaed (past)

I have seen a Lubra, or native woman, suckling two puppies; and, like monkeys, these ladies have a particular fancy for fleaing their dogs.

1861, Horace William Wheelwright, Bush Wanderings of a Naturalist, page 192:

(transitive) To remove fleas from (an animal).


flea

flea (third-person singular simple present fleas, present participle fleaing, simple past and past participle flead)

fleas (present singular third-person)
fleaing (participle present)
flead (participle past)
flead (past)

[…] he'd flea me alive like another St Bartholomew.

1605, Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Everyman's Library, published 1991, page 36:

In this Thwackum had the advantage; for while Square could only scarify the poor lad's reputation, he could flea his skin […]

1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC:


pique

pique (third-person singular simple present piques, present participle piquing, simple past and past participle piqued)

piques (present singular third-person)
piquing (participle present)
piqued (participle past)
piqued (past)

The verb is borrowed from French piquer (“to prick, sting; to anger, annoy; (reflexive) to get angry; to provoke, stimulate; (reflexive) to boast about”), from Middle French piquer, picquer (“to prick, sting; to anger, annoy; (reflexive) to get angry”), from Old French piquer (“to pierce with the tip of a sword”), from proto-Romance or Vulgar Latin *pīccare (“to sting; to strike”) or *pikkāre, and then either:
* Onomatopoeic; or
* from Frankish *pikkōn, from Proto-Germanic *pikkōną (“to knock; to peck; to pick; to prick”). If so, pique is a doublet of pick, pitch, and peck.
The noun is borrowed from Middle French pique (“a quarrel; resentment”) (modern French pique), from piquer, picquer (verb); see above.


pique

en-noun

pique (countable and uncountable, plural piques)

Men take up piques and diſpleaſures at others, and then every opinion of the diſliked perſon muſt partake of his fate, and be engaged in the quarrel: […]

1667, attributed to Richard Allestree, “A Survey of the Causes of Disputes; Fourthly, Passion”, in The Causes of the Decay of Christian Piety. […], London: […] R. Norton for T. Garthwait, […], →OCLC, page 373:

[H]e ſhew'd himself, out of ſome little pique, the moſt bitter enemy againſt the K[ing, i.e., Charles I of England] in all the Houſe [of Parliament], as well in action as ſpeech; […]

1691, [Anthony Wood], “HENRY MARTEN”, in Athenæ Oxonienses. An Exact History of All the Writers and Bishops who have had Their Education in the Most Ancient and Famous University of Oxford from the Fifteenth Year of King Henry the Seventh, Dom. 1500, to the End of the Year 1690. […], volume II (Completing the Whole Work), London: […] Tho[mas] Bennet […], →OCLC, column 493:

This dog and man at firſt were friends; / But when a pique began, / The dog, to gain his private ends, / Went mad and bit the man.

1766, [Oliver Goldsmith], “A Migration. The Fortunate Circumstances of Our Lives are Generally Found at Last to Be of Our Own Procuring. [An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog.]”, in The Vicar of Wakefield: […], volume I, Salisbury, Wiltshire: […] B. Collins, for F[rancis] Newbery, […], →OCLC, pages 175–176:

Not so Madame de Soissons, who at once divined his intentions and watched his progress, internally resolving to render him every ill office pique could suggest, or ridicule execute.

1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXVI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 222:

[L]ong, costly, and bloody wars had arisen upon a point of ceremony, upon a personal pique, upon a hasty word, upon some explosion of momentary caprice; […]

1853, Thomas De Quincey, “On War”, in Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers. […], volume II, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC, pages 199–200:

[T]here occurred one of the little skirmishes which it is almost impossible to avoid, when some five-and-twenty women, old and young, with all their private piques and prejudices, try to work together.

1869, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, “Consequences”, in Little Women: […], part second, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC, page 93:

(uncountable) Enmity, ill feeling; (countable) a feeling of animosity or a dispute.

обида

enmity, ill feeling; a feeling of animosity or a dispute

Tuſh! tuſh! you take the grave peake uppon you too much: who would think you could ſo eaſily ſhake off your olde friendes?

1592, Tho[mas] Nashe, “The Foure Letters Confuted”, in Strange Newes, of the Intercepting Certaine Letters and a Convoy of Verses, […], London: […] Iohn Danter, […], →OCLC; republished in J[ohn] Payne Collier, editor, Illustrations of Early English Literature (Miscellaneous Tracts; Temp. Eliz. and Jac. I), volume II, London: Privately printed, [1867], →OCLC, page 35:

Pray, my Lord, take no picque at it: 'tis not given to all men to be confident: […]

1667 (revival performance), John Dryden, The Wild Gallant: A Comedy. […], In the Savoy [London]: […] T[homas] Newcomb for H[enry] Herringman, […], published 1669, Act II, page 20:

"'Tis because you are an indifferent person," said Lucy, with some pique, and laying a particular stress on those words, "that your judgment must justly have such weight with me.["]

1811, [Jane Austen], chapter II, in Sense and Sensibility […], volume II, London: […] C[harles] Roworth, […], and published by T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 30:

"At all events," replied Francesca, "it could not be better bestowed, than as an offering, however unworthy, for his sake who is nearest and dearest to me in the world." / "I thank you for the implied compliment," returned Evelyn, in a tone of pique.

1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXIII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 283:

You think this is a personal thing with me? Are you telling me I think of this in terms of a personal pique?

1957 June 27, Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman, Alexander Mackendrick (uncredited), Sweet Smell of Success:

This defiance was not a fit of pique, but a matter of principle. He [Mandela's father] was asserting his traditional prerogative as a chief and was challenging the authority of the magistrate.

1994, Nelson Mandela, chapter 1, in Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, part 1 (A Country Childhood), page 6:

[Jürgen] Klopp’s team had the better balance between attack and defence and, crucially, they got lucky with the disallowed goal that brought [Pep] Guardiola to the point of spontaneous combustion at half-time. Guardiola’s fit of pique led to his banishment from the dugout and City will wonder what might have happened if they had taken a 2–0 lead into the second half.

2018 April 10, Daniel Taylor, “Liverpool go through after Mohamed Salah stops Manchester City fightback”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2021-10-03:

(uncountable) Irritation or resentment awakened by a social injury or slight; offence, especially taken in an emotional sense with little consideration or thought; (countable) especially in fit of pique: a transient feeling of wounded pride.

uražená pýcha

irritation or resentment awakened by a social injury or slight; a transient feeling of wounded pride


pique

Borrowed from Spanish pique, from Central Quechua piki.

Tunga penetrans
Tunga penetrans#Translingual

(obsolete) A chigger, chigoe, or jigger (Tunga penetrans), a species of tropical flea.


jigger

→ Catalan: gigre

From jig + -er (agent suffix). Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary suggests a possible link to Old High German gīga (“fiddle”).

“an air-brush is a big thing-a-ma-bob or whatcha-callit, full of gas, and when you turn on a little jigger, it causes compressed air to squeeze out, which, in turn, going through a needle—” “That wasn't part of the contract, Mr. Jones,” […]

(US) A placeholder name for any small mechanical device.


lop

From Middle English loppe (“flea, spider”), from Old English loppe (“spider, silk-worm, flea”), from Proto-Germanic *luppǭ (“flea, sandflea", originally, "jumper”), from Proto-Germanic *luppijaną (“to jump, dart”). Cognate with Danish loppe (“flea”), Swedish loppa (“flea”). Compare also Middle High German lüpfen, lupfen (“to raise”, obsolete also “to rise”).

der

LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-lop.wav

Hadway wi ye man, ye liftin wi lops.

Lice, That's nick name to the stuff called Lops

1651, John Cleveland, “The Hue and Cry after Sir John Presbiter”, in Poems:


chigger

—He's not black, Stacia Jacobs who smelled like pee said. — He's yellow and black. He's a chigger. Do you know what a chigger is? It's a chink and a nigger.

2007, James Boice, MVP: A Novel, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 37:

(US, slang, derogatory, offensive) An East Asian person who behaves in ways similar to a stereotypical urban African American.


bubonic plague

en-noun

bubonic plague (countable and uncountable, plural bubonic plagues)

Yersinia pestis
Yersinia pestis#Translingual

(pathology) A contagious, often fatal, epidemic disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted by the bite of fleas from an infected person or rodent, especially a rat, and characterized by delirium, chills, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and the formation of buboes.


chigoe

Uncertain. Possibly from a Cariban language term such as Kari'na siko (“chigoe”) (early recorded variant chico), from Proto-Cariban *tikô, or else a West African borrowing such as Wolof or Yoruba jiga (“insect”). The eighteenth century historian Charlevoix refers to them as chique in his 1730 history of Hispaniola.

A small tropical flea, Tunga penetrans, whose females burrow under the skin of animals, including humans, and lay their eggs, causing strong irritation and sores.

Chigoe flea
Pierre_François Xavier de Charlevoix


sand flea

Any of various small crustaceans of the family Talitridae (order Amphipoda), that are found on beaches and jump like a flea.

A small tropical flea, Tunga penetrans; a chigoe (family: Tungidae, order: Siphonaptera).


siphonapteran

Absence of peripheral singlets, though with varying numbers of central singlets, is seen not only in mecopterans and siphonapterans but also in mycetophilid dipterans, and trichopterans.

1987, Barrie Gillean Molyneux Jamieson, The Ultrastructure and Phylogeny of Insect Spermatozoa, page 206:

Members of the genus Blastocrithidia are common pathogens of dipterans, hemipterans, and siphonapterans.

1998, Drion G. Boucias, Jacquelyn C. Pendland, Principles of Insect Pathology, page 396:

The last remaining group, the siphonapterans or fleas, appeared in the Cenozoic, coincident with the radiation of the mammals that they parasitise.

2006, Robert Wynn Jones, Applied Palaeontology, page 174:

Any species of the order Siphonaptera, a flea.


flea circus

A circus sideshow attraction in which fleas are attached (or appear to be attached) to miniature carts and other items, and encouraged to perform circus acts within a small housing.

vlooisirkus

circus sideshow attraction starring fleas


sandworm

(US) A clam worm or ragworm, of species Alitta virens.


flea-ridden

en-adj

flea-ridden (comparative more flea-ridden, superlative most flea-ridden)

more flea-ridden (comparative)
most flea-ridden (superlative)

Two or three times a week a sort of Italian eil-wagen, a funereal and tumble-down, flea-ridden coach, with windows boarded up so high that, when seated, you cannot see out of them, and closed hermetically, after Italian fashion, shambles along at jog-trot pace between the two towns, and takes a livelong day, from early morning to late at night, to perform the journey.

1861, Edward Dicey, chapter 14, in Rome in 1860, London: Macmillan, pages 207–208:

He threw Dormer the paper, stooped to pat the flea-ridden puppy of the hotel, and went in.

1913, D. K. Broster, G. W. Taylor, The Vision Splendid, London: John Murray, Book II, Chapter 15 (1):

“Tell them, then, that if they don't go...I’ll knock all their teeth out...I’ll tear their ears off...I’ll hang the lot of them...and that I'll burn down their entire flea-ridden village. Understand?”

2002, Karel Čapek, translated by David Wyllie, The War with the Newts, published 1936, Book One, Chapter I:


pulicene

pulicene (comparative more pulicene, superlative most pulicene)

more pulicene (comparative)
most pulicene (superlative)


fleabite

The bite of a flea, or the mark caused by such a bite.


flealike

flealike (comparative more flealike, superlative most flealike)

more flealike (comparative)
most flealike (superlative)

The toy moved across the floor with flealike hops.


siphonapterology

/ˌsaɪfənæptəˈɹɑləd͡ʒi/

/ˌsaɪfənæptəˈɹɒləd͡ʒi/

His collections, writings and enthusiasm gave a decided impetus to twentieth-century siphonapterology and the world flea fauna is currently being covered in a superb monographic series of volumes based on his material.

1984, J. S. Fairley, An Irish Beast Book: A Natural History of Ireland's Furred Wildlife:

The scientific study of fleas and other insects of the order Siphonaptera.


pulicous

pulicous (comparative more pulicous, superlative most pulicous)

more pulicous (comparative)
most pulicous (superlative)

From Latin pulicosus, from pulex (“flea”).

An emaciated dog sprang out from behind a tree, its coat pulicous, more swarming flees[sic] than fur in fact

2007, Michael J. A. Speyer, The Chronicles of Samuel Sassodoro, Book One:


human flea

1915, F. C. Bishopp, Fleas as Pests to Man and Animals, with Suggestions for Their Control, US Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin 683, page 2,
The human flea normally attacks man, but may be found on a number of other animals.

Furthermore it is important to state that the role of the human flea^([as a plague vector]) was always thought to be of secondary importance compared to that of the rat flea.

2004, Dionysios Ch Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empire, page 128:

Very high population concentrations of human fleas could conceivably lead to plague transmission even if the individual human flea is an inefficient vector (Hirst, Conquest of Plague, 186-87).

2007, Robert Sallares, “Ecology, Evolution, and Epidemiolgy of Plague”, in Lester K. Little, editor, Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541-750, page 272, footnote:

Pulex irritans
Pulex irritans#Translingual

A species of flea, Pulex irritans, with a variety of hosts, that is relatively prevalent among humans.


ceratophyllid

(zoology) Any flea in the family Ceratophyllidae.


pulicid

We do not question the corollaries of Jordan's postulate, namely that vermipsyllid fleas never had ctenidia whereas comb-less pulicids and hystrichopsyllids are the descendants of comb-bearing fleas (Holland 1959).

1967, Bernice P. Bishop Museum Entomology Department, Pacific Insects, page 643:

These introduced pulicid fleas are cosmopolitan, having also been introduced by human transport to all continents except Antarctica (Lewis 1995).

2001, Diego P. Vázquez, Daniel Simberloff, “Chapter 6: Taxonomic Selectivity in Surviving Introduced Insects in the United States”, in Julie L. Lockwood, Michael L. McKinney, editors, Biotic Homogenization, page 114:

Two possible, not mutually exclusive, scenarios can be suggested. In the first, ancestors of the dipodine genus Jaculus dispersed to Africa (Black & Krishtalka, 1986) where they were presumably colonized by pulicids. In the second scenario, pulicids colonized jerboas switching from Gerbillinae which originated in Africa and dispersed to Asia no later than in the Miocene (Wessels, 1998).

2008, Boris R. Krasnov, Functional and Evolutionary Ecology of Fleas, page 40:

(zoology) Any flea of the family Pulicidae.


sarcopsyllid

(zoology) Any flea in the family Sarcopsyllidae, a synonym of the Hectopsyllidae in some classifications, or of the Tungidae in others.


stephanocircid

(zoology) Any flea in the family Stephanocircidae.


tungid

Tungid fleas, one of which is commonly known as the sand flea, can cause such damage to a person. The tungid female embeds itself into the skin of the host until just the end of the abdomen is exposed. It swells to the size of a pea as its eggs develop.

1982, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Utah Mosquito Abatement Association, Volume 34, Parts 1981-1996, page 33:

These same features are likely to be much reduced in other fleas, such as tungids and sticktights, that attach more firmly to the host and feed for long periods at a particular site.

2004, Kenneth L. Gage, “Chapter 7: Fleas, the Syphonaptera”, in William H. Marquardt, editor, Biology of Disease Vectors, page 81:

As well as fleas, which move freely in the home and pelage of the host, there are those, like the tungids (Tungidae) and alakurts (Vermipsyllidae), that burrow into its skin and become neosomic (Fig. 9.5).

2005, M. J. Lehane, The Biology of Blood-Sucking in Insects, page 214:

(zoology) Any flea of the family Tungidae.


tungiasis

An inflammatory skin disease caused by infection with the female ectoparasitic Tunga penetrans flea.


chigoe flea

In one version of the legend, the move was owing to an intolerable infestation by chigoe fleas in the Pokolum area (cf. Hunn 1977, 307).

1999, Luisa Maffi, “Domesticated Land, Warm and Cold: Linguistic and Historical Evidence on Tenejapa Tzeltal Maya Ethnoecology”, in Ted L. Gragson, Ben G. Blount, editors, Ethnoecology: Knowledge, Resources, and Rights, page 52:

In contrast to most fleas, which do not invade the human integument, the chigoe flea, Tunga penetrans, may cause considerable damage by actively invading the skin. The female chigoe flea burrows into the skin, often under the toenails or between the toes, where she sucks blood and lays her eggs.

2002, Patrick R. Murray, chapter I, in Medical Microbiology, page 778:

The conditions that lead to their abundance are even more mysterious than for sand flies, but chigoe fleas are clearly more numerous in some households than others.

2009, Daniel Strickman, Stephen P Frances, Mustapha Debboun, Prevention of Bug Bites, Stings, and Disease, page 76:


hectopsyllid

Loss of bristles, or reduction in their size, is characteristic of other ectoparasites with a burrowing or semisedentary habit, as exemplified by the tungid and hectopsyllid fleas.

1955, Robert Traub, Mary Lou Morrow, A revision of the chiggers of the subgenus Gahrliepia (Acarina: Trombiculidae), page 49:

There are sticktight fleas that parasitize bats, namely, some hectopsyllids and pulicids, but they are not pertinent to this discussion since they have evolved other means to solve the problems of infesting bats:[…].

1985, Ke Chung Kim, Coevolution of Parasitic Arthropods and Mammals, page 395:

Any flea of the family Hectopsyllidae (Tungidae).