Wiktionary
n. Any of various beetles of the family Anobiidae that bore into wood and make a tapping sound.
WordNet
n. bores through wood making a ticking sound popularly thought to presage death [syn: deathwatch, Xestobium rufovillosum]
Wikipedia
The deathwatch beetle, Xestobium rufovillosum, is a woodboring beetle. The adult beetle is long, while the xylophagous larvae are up to long.
To attract mates, these woodborers create a tapping or ticking sound that can be heard in the rafters of old buildings on quiet summer nights. They are therefore associated with quiet, sleepless nights and are named for the vigil (watch) kept beside the dying or dead, and by extension the superstitious have seen the deathwatch beetle as an omen of impending death.
The term "death watch" has been applied to a variety of other ticking insects, including Anobium striatum, some of the so-called booklice of the family Psocidae, and the appropriately named Atropos divinatoria and Clothilla pulsatoria.
The larva is very soft, yet can bore its way through wood, which it is able to digest using a number of enzymes in its alimentary canal, provided that the wood has experienced prior fungal decay.
Usage examples of "deathwatch beetle".
His voice called to her in all the sounds that had ever frightened her-spoken soft, it was the tick of a deathwatch beetle under the stairs, telling that someone loved would soon pass over.
One of the very ancient ones, who was barely holding himself together, made a noise like deathwatch beetle finally conquering a rotten tree.
Click, clump, click, clump went the boots again, that terrible slow deathwatch beetle sound, like an unseen clock marking the endless moments of nightmare.
That which the tireless assault of wind and weather had not achieved without, had been amply accomplished within by woodworm and a multifarious variety of fungi, dry rot and deathwatch beetle.
Weakness in one member is the deathwatch beetle in the total structure.