"woolly bear" meaning in English

See woolly bear in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: woolly bears [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} woolly bear (plural woolly bears)
  1. (colloquial) A hairy caterpillar. Tags: colloquial Translations (hairy caterpillar): behaarde rups [common-gender] (Dutch), Haarraupe [feminine] (German), haarige Raupe [feminine] (German), behaarte Raupe [feminine] (German), björnspinnarlarv (Swedish)
    Sense id: en-woolly_bear-en-noun-zETMpuTD Disambiguation of 'hairy caterpillar': 94 4 2
  2. Specifically, the larva of a moth of the family Arctiidae. Translations (larva of a moth of the family Arctiidae): chenille hérissonne [feminine] (French), Bärenspinnerraupe [feminine] (German)
    Sense id: en-woolly_bear-en-noun-tOcNQck7 Disambiguation of 'larva of a moth of the family Arctiidae': 7 92 0
  3. (military slang, historical) An explosive shell that gives out dense smoke when it bursts. Tags: historical, slang Categories (lifeform): Noctuoid moths Translations (explosive shell): fumigène [masculine] (French)
    Sense id: en-woolly_bear-en-noun-b6uzvRky Disambiguation of Noctuoid moths: 23 18 59 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 12 2 85 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 12 9 78 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 12 11 78 Topics: government, military, politics, war Disambiguation of 'explosive shell': 0 0 100
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: woolly worm, wooly bear

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for woolly bear meaning in English (3.7kB)

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        "A hairy caterpillar."
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        "(colloquial) A hairy caterpillar."
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          "_dis1": "94 4 2",
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          "_dis1": "94 4 2",
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          "_dis1": "94 4 2",
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          "ref": "1929, Frederic Manning, The Middle Parts of Fortune, Vintage, published 2014, page 236",
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          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2000, Harold A Skaarup, Whiz Bangs and Woolly Bears, page 12",
          "text": "‘A Woolly Bear was used for demolition, and could be compared with our 5.9's. It burst on impact, made a big hole and left a tremendous cloud of black smoke.’",
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      "word": "wooly bear"
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      "sense": "hairy caterpillar",
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      "word": "behaarde rups"
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      "sense": "hairy caterpillar",
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      "word": "Haarraupe"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "hairy caterpillar",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "haarige Raupe"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "hairy caterpillar",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "behaarte Raupe"
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      "sense": "hairy caterpillar",
      "word": "björnspinnarlarv"
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  "word": "woolly bear"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-24 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (82c8ff9 and f4967a5). 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.