Mossie

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small biting flying insect, informally called a mossie, whose females feed on blood and can spread disease
2. An informal Australian and British word for the mosquito, a slender insect that bites people and animals to feed
3. Slang for a mosquito, the tiny winged pest that buzzes around at dusk and leaves itchy bites on the skin

Etymology: The word "mossie" is a diminutive, a little name for a mosquito, and it reached English by way of South Africa. Its base is Dutch "mus," meaning sparrow, and the Afrikaans "mossie" carried that small-bird sense before the insect sense took over. Speakers in southern Africa seem to have heard the first syllable of "mosquito" as a familiar sparrow-like word and shrank the name to match, much as English speakers clip "mosquito" itself into a friendly little form. The link runs even further. Dutch has a near-equivalent, "meuzie," used for the mosquito itself, so the pattern of calling a biting insect by a tiny, affectionate name appears in more than one language of the region's settlers.