"lightning bug" meaning in English

See lightning bug in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: lightning bugs [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} lightning bug (plural lightning bugs)
  1. A firefly. Categories (topical): Light sources Categories (lifeform): Elateroid beetles
    Sense id: en-lightning_bug-en-noun-png6mfpB Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for lightning bug meaning in English (1.1kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "lightning bugs",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "lightning bug (plural lightning bugs)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "lifeform",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Elateroid beetles",
          "orig": "en:Elateroid beetles",
          "parents": [
            "Beetles",
            "Insects",
            "Arthropods",
            "Animals",
            "Lifeforms",
            "All topics",
            "Life",
            "Fundamental",
            "Nature"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Light sources",
          "orig": "en:Light sources",
          "parents": [
            "Light",
            "Energy",
            "Nature",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2019, Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer, Penguin Books (2020), page 18",
          "text": "I watched as lightning bugs drifted in, glowing yellow against the shadows.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A firefly."
      ],
      "id": "en-lightning_bug-en-noun-png6mfpB",
      "links": [
        [
          "firefly",
          "firefly"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "lightning bug"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "lightning bugs",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "lightning bug (plural lightning bugs)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "en:Elateroid beetles",
        "en:Light sources"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2019, Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer, Penguin Books (2020), page 18",
          "text": "I watched as lightning bugs drifted in, glowing yellow against the shadows.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A firefly."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "firefly",
          "firefly"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "lightning bug"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.