par·a·sit·oid

[par-uh-si-toid, -sahy-]
noun
1.
an organism that practices parasitoidism.
adjective
2.
of or pertaining to a parasite, especially one practicing parasitoidism.

Origin:
1920–25; < Neo-Latin Parasitoïdea (1913); see parasite, -oid

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
Cite This Source Link To parasitoid
Collins
World English Dictionary
parasitoid (ˈpærəsɪˌtɔːd) [Click for IPA pronunciation guide]
 
n
zoology an animal, esp an insect, that is parasitic during the larval stage of its life cycle but becomes free-living when adult

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source
00:10
Parasitoid is always a great word to know.
So is quincunx. Does it mean:
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
American Heritage
Science Dictionary
parasitoid   (pār'ə-sĭ-toid', -sī'toid)  Pronunciation Key 
Any of various insects, such as the ichneumon fly, whose larvae are parasites that eventually kill their hosts. The adult parasitoid deposits an egg on or inside the body of its host, typically the larva of another arthropod. When the egg hatches, the parasitoid larva feeds on the host's tissues, gradually killing it.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
Copyright © 2002. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source
Example sentences
Parasitoid wasps and flies use their long ovipositors to thrust their eggs into the eggs and bodies of other insects.
That's based on an actual biological strategy for parasitoid wasps.
Copyright © 2013 Dictionary.com, LLC. All rights reserved.
  • Please Login or Sign Up to use the Recent Searches feature
FAVORITES
RECENT