Crossword clues for louse
louse
- It sucks
- Adult nit
- Small parasite
- Ruin, with "up"
- Grown-up nit
- Deplorable sort
- Wingless insect
- Nit layer
- It might make you a nitpicker
- Hair parasite
- ___ up (botch)
- Unsavory character
- Spoil, with "up"
- Reason to nitpick?
- No-good one
- Botch (up)
- Wingless, bloodsucking insect
- Wingless parasitic insect
- Unethical sort
- Unethical one
- Unethical character
- Two-legged rat
- Tiny sucker
- Target of permethrin cream
- Rotten fellow
- Parasite with no wings
- No-good heel
- Low-down character
- It's small and sucks
- It might turn you into a nitpicker
- It might make you a nit-picker
- It could make you a nit picker
- Head parasite
- Head bug
- Common parasite
- Cause of some nit-picking?
- "To a ___", Burns poem
- ____ up (botch)
- Contemptible one
- No-goodnik
- Screw (up)
- Real heel
- Cad
- Contemptible person
- No-good sort
- Good-for-nothing
- Mostly parasitic on birds
- Wingless usually flattened blood-sucking insect parasitic on warm-blooded animals
- Has a nasty or unethical character undeserving of respect
- Any of several small insects especially aphids that feed by sucking the juices from plants
- Wingless insect with mouth parts adapted for biting
- A real heel
- "To a ___," Burns poem
- Dirty rat
- Follower of book or wood
- Subject of a Burns poem
- " . . . scarce the soul of a ___": Kipling
- Miss cuddling upper-class cad?
- Maybe Redknapp will reject international six-footer
- Contemptible person removing outer layer of clothing
- Certain parasite
- Wingless bloodsucker
- Nasty person, see, wanting employment
- Look to exploit wretch
- Leonardo's outside to exploit rotter
- Latin name of river insect
- Insect - nasty character, undeserving of respect
- Despicable type (of insect?)
- Dirty dog
- Despicable one
- Despicable sort
- Despicable person
- Contemptible sort
- Parasitic insect
- Wingless parasite
- Despicable character
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Louse \Louse\ (lous), n.; pl. Lice (l[imac]s). [OE. lous, AS. l[=u]s, pl. l[=y]s; akin to D. luis, G. laus, OHG. l[=u]s, Icel. l[=u]s, Sw. lus, Dan. luus; perh. so named because it is destructive, and akin to E. lose, loose.] (Zo["o]l.)
Any one of numerous species of small, wingless, suctorial, parasitic insects belonging to a tribe ( Pediculina), now usually regarded as degraded Hemiptera. To this group belong of the lice of man and other mammals; as, the head louse of man ( Pediculus capitis), the body louse ( Pediculus vestimenti), and the crab louse ( Phthirius pubis), and many others. See Crab louse, Dog louse, Cattle louse, etc., under Crab, Dog, etc.
Any one of numerous small mandibulate insects, mostly parasitic on birds, and feeding on the feathers. They are known as Mallophaga, or bird lice, though some occur on the hair of mammals. They are usually regarded as degraded Pseudoneuroptera. See Mallophaga.
Any one of the numerous species of aphids, or plant lice. See Aphid.
-
Any small crustacean parasitic on fishes. See Branchiura, and Ichthvophthira.
Note: The term is also applied to various other parasites; as, the whale louse, beelouse, horse louse.
Louse fly (Zo["o]l.), a parasitic dipterous insect of the group Pupipara. Some of them are wingless, as the bee louse.
Louse mite (Zo["o]l.), any one of numerous species of mites which infest mammals and birds, clinging to the hair and feathers like lice. They belong to Myobia, Dermaleichus, Mycoptes, and several other genera.
Louse \Louse\ (louz), v. t.
To clean from lice. ``You sat and loused him.''
--Swift.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"parasitic insect infecting human hair and skin," Old English lus, from Proto-Germanic *lus (cognates: Old Norse lus, Middle Dutch luus, Dutch luis, Old High German lus, German Laus), from PIE *lus- "louse" (cognates: Welsh lleuen "louse"). Slang meaning "obnoxious person" is from 1630s. The plural lice (Old English lys) shows effects of i-mutation. The verb meaning "to clear of lice" is from late 14c.; to louse up "ruin, botch" first attested 1934, from the literal sense (of bedding), from 1931. Grose ["Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," 1785] has louse ladder "A stitch fallen in a stocking."
Wiktionary
n. 1 A small parasitic wingless insect of the order ''Phthiraptera''. 2 (context colloquial dated not usually used in plural form English) A contemptible person; one who has recently taken an action considered deceitful or indirectly harmful. vb. To remove lice from the body of a person or animal; to delouse.
WordNet
n. wingless usually flattened blood-sucking insect parasitic on warm-blooded animals [syn: sucking louse]
a person who has a nasty or unethical character undeserving of respect [syn: worm, insect, dirt ball]
any of several small insects especially aphids that feed by sucking the juices from plants [syn: plant louse]
wingless insect with mouth parts adapted for biting; mostly parasitic on birds [syn: bird louse, biting louse]
[also: lice (pl)]
Wikipedia
Louse (plural: lice) is the common name for members of the order Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless insect. Lice are obligate parasites, living externally on warm-blooded hosts which include every species of bird and mammal, except for monotremes, pangolins, bats and cetaceans. Lice are vectors of diseases such as typhus.
Chewing lice live among the hairs or feathers of their host and feed on skin and debris, while sucking lice pierce the host's skin and feed on blood and other secretions. They usually spend their whole life on a single host, cementing their eggs, which are known as nits, to hairs or feathers. The eggs hatch into nymphs, which moult three times before becoming fully grown, a process that takes about four weeks.
Humans host three species of louse, the head louse, the body louse and the pubic louse. The body louse has the smallest genome of any known insect; it has been used as a model organism and has been the subject of much research.
Lice were ubiquitous in human society until at least the Middle Ages. They appear in folktales, songs such as The Kilkenny Louse House, and novels such as James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. They commonly feature in the psychiatric disorder delusional parasitosis. A louse was one of the early subjects of microscopy, appearing in Robert Hooke's 1667 book, Micrographia.
- A louse is a wingless insect.
- For the infection see Pediculosis
:* Pediculosis capitis (Head lice infestation)
:* Pediculosis corporis (Pediculosis vestimenti, Vagabond's disease)
:* Pediculosis pubis (Crabs)
Louse may also refer to.
- Gill louse, Ergasilus, a genus of parasitic copepod crustaceans
- Hog louse, the Asellidae, a family of freshwater isopod crustaceans
- Sea louse, the Caligidae, a family of ectoparasitic marine copepods
- Stone louse, a fictitious animal created by the humorist Loriot
- Whale louse, the Cyamidae, a family of parasitic amphipod crustaceans
- Woodlouse, the Oniscidea, a suborder of terrestrial isopod crustaceans
Usage examples of "louse".
The ammoniacal fluid was harsh, and smelled strong, but it dissolved oils and grease on her skin and in her hair, and it killed any lice or fleas she might have picked up.
She is chained in such a way as to preclude movement which might tear at the mesh or break it, thus making possible the entry of urts, which might eat at her, lowering her price, and to preclude her tearing hysterically with her hands and fingernails at her own body, bloodying herself, perhaps scarring herself, again lowering her price, in her attempt to obtain relief from the bites and itching consequent upon the infestation and depredation of the numerous, almost constantly active ship lice.
I had brushed it, though, and it floated loose around my shoulders, smelling pleasantly of the hyssop and nettle-flower infusion I combed through it to keep lice at bay.
We now formed the acquaintance of a species of human vermin that united with the Rebels, cold, hunger, lice and the oppression of distraint, to leave nothing undone that could add to the miseries of our prison life.
To be compelled, at such a time, to lie around in vacuous idleness-- to spend days that should be crowded full of action in a monotonous, objectless routine of hunting lice, gathering at roll-call, and drawing and cooking our scanty rations, was torturing.
It did not even seem exaggeration when some one declared that lie had seen a dead man with more than a gallon of lice on him.
As the weather grew warmer and the number in the prison increased, the lice became more unendurable.
We began to have a full comprehension of the third plague with which the Lord visited the Egyptians: And the Lord said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod, and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice through all the land of Egypt.
As we realized what the whole affair meant, we relieved our surcharged feelings with a few general yells of execration upon Rebels generally, and upon those around us particularly, and resumed our occupation of cooking rations, killing lice, and discussing the prospects of exchange and escape.
Every part of his clothing was gray with the lice that were hastening his death with their torments.
The haggard, distressed countenances of these miserable, complaining, dejected, living skeletons, crying for medical aid and food, and cursing their Government for its refusal to exchange prisoners, and the ghastly corpses, with their glazed eye balls staring up into vacant space, with the flies swarming down their open and grinning mouths, and over their ragged clothes, infested with numerous lice, as they lay amongst the sick and dying, formed a picture of helpless, hopeless misery which it would be impossible to portray bywords or by the brush.
They were worn solely to afford convenient quarters for multitudes of lice, and in deference to the prejudice which has existed since the Fall of Man against our mingling with our fellow creatures in the attire provided us by Nature.
I removed these, scraped out from each of the dozens of great folds in the legs about a half pint of lice, and drew the garments over my own half-frozen limbs, the first real covering those members had had for four or five months.
During the warmest part of the day everybody disrobed, and spent an hour or more killing the lice that had waxed and multiplied to grievous proportions during the few days of comparative immunity.
We were still chuckling at having seen Lionel from HELP, paged by the nurse, checking out the room numbers and then, with a spiffy straightening of his Blazer and forelock, entering the room of the Lady of the Lice, the room crawling with the crabs.