Entomological linguists: Why does "bug" only apply to Hemipterans?

Factual Questions
1

In common lingo, “bug” refers to any insect or small arthropod, but I know that entomologists use “bug” only for insects of the order Hemiptera.

How did this specialized meaning come about? As far as I can tell, the common meaning long predates the specific one. Often some narrow term used by specialists gets broadened when it leaks into the popular realm. Here, however, it looks like the specialists adopted a broad term and decided to use it in only a narrow sense.

When and why did scientists decide that only hemipterans are “true bugs”?

2

Earliest use of “bug” is apparently in reference to bedbugs, which are in Hemiptera.

3

It’s a question that has interested me for a long time. The Old English term for insect was apparently wigca or wigga.

“Bug” in English apparently goes back to the late 1300s, when as “bugge” it referred to a hobgoblin or scarecrow. It didn’t begin to be used for insects until the 1600s, when as Machine Elf says it was used for bedbugs. So when a classification was established, members of the same order as bedbugs (Hemiptera) became known as true bugs. Bug eventually became extended to insects and even all small crawling things on land.

Interestingly, insect goes back to 1601 in English, and so may actually have preceded bug as a general term for this group.

This said, IMO as a popular term “bug” is perfectly correct to use for small crawling things including insects and spiders.

4

But I have to say I regret that you missed your chance to title this thread “Entomological etymologists” or “Etymological entomologists.”:smiley:

5

This topic has always bugged me, too.

6

Thank you. So it really was specific to general: bedbugs to sucking insects, to all crawly things.

7

I slapped my head after hitting “submit”.

8

And to other stuff which doesn’t crawl much, such as stomach bugs.

9

It’s interesting that when bug was first applied to crawly things, it was only to crawly things that creeped you out.

I’m happy thinking that by calling them ‘true bugs’ entomologists were in essence saying “these are the creepy ones”.

I still think Piercing, Sucking Mouth Parts* would make a great band name.

  • the requirements for a ‘true bug’
10

As in “bugbear”.

11

But not ‘bugger’ apparently.

12

For 10 years or more, the primary/elementary schools and school museum programs here have called them all “mini beasts”.

I assume that this is a politically correct way of avoiding arguments about misidentification.

13

…to bats.

14

This seems like an appropriate link

15

Huh, I thought it was one of the defining characteristics of the true bugs that they had two pairs of wings, but bedbugs only have one pair, and that vestigial.

16

The defining character is the sucking beak. The ancestral condition in the order is two pairs of wings, but many species have lost one or even both pairs (for example, aphids, except for dispersing winged forms.)

17

Even though some of those sucking beaks are for sucking blood, and some are for sucking plant juices. Interesting.

And of course, there are plenty of other non-bug insects with sucking mouthparts, like the dipteran mosquitoes. But I guess those are a different style of sucking mouthpart.

18

I knew exactly where that link would go before I clicked on it. applause

19

Yes, the structure of the sucking mouthparts in mosquitoes and hemipterans are completely different.

20

My etymological dictionary confirms what Colibri said about going back to goblin. The Swiss (or at least the inhabitants of Zurich) have a festival ever spring in which they explode a giant goblin called the Boog, which I always assumed went back to an old IE root that basically means a god. But my dictionary does not support that assumption.