Auchenorrhyncha

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A suborder of sap-feeding true bugs that includes cicadas, leafhoppers and treehoppers, distinguished by their piercing mouthparts
2. The insect suborder containing cicadas, leafhoppers and treehoppers, all of which feed on plant sap through piercing beaks
3. Named for its rear-facing mouthparts, this suborder of hemipteran insects comprises cicadas, leafhoppers and treehoppers

Etymology: Auchenorrhyncha is the name of a suborder of insects that includes leafhoppers, cicadas, froghoppers and planthoppers. The name is a modern scientific coinage built from Greek: "auchen" meaning "neck", and "rhynchos" meaning "beak" or "snout", a reference to the way these insects hold their sucking mouthparts. The pieces were put together by taxonomists working in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, not by the ancient Greeks, who had no words for these insects in this sense. The name is a pure technical label, and its structure is what matters. The "-a" ending is the Latin plural marker that scientific names often take, so the word names a group rather than a single creature. Its counterpart, Sternorrhyncha, is built on the Greek "sternon", meaning "chest", and the two names together describe insects whose mouthparts seem to grow from different parts of the body.