noun
definition
A small car, the Volkswagen Beetle (original version made 1938–2003, similar models made 1997–2010 and since 2011)
noun
definition
Any of numerous species of insect in the order Coleoptera characterized by a pair of hard, shell-like front wings which cover and protect a pair of rear wings when at rest.
definition
A game of chance in which players attempt to complete a drawing of a beetle, different dice rolls allowing them to add the various body parts.
verb
definition
To move away quickly, to scurry away.
example
He beetled off on his vacation.
verb
definition
To loom over; to extend or jut.
example
The heavy chimney beetled over the thatched roof.
noun
definition
A type of mallet with a large wooden head, used to drive wedges, beat pavements, etc.
definition
A machine in which fabrics are subjected to a hammering process while passing over rollers, as in cotton mills; a beetling machine.
verb
definition
To beat with a heavy mallet.
definition
To finish by subjecting to a hammering process in a beetle or beetling machine.
example
to beetle cotton goods
Examples of beetles in a Sentence
The beetles are elegant insects with long, slender legs, running quickly, and flying in the sunshine.
Ganglbauer (1892) divides the whole order into two sub-orders only, the Caraboidea (the Adephaga of Sharp and the older writers) and the Cantharidoidea (including all other beetles), since the larvae of Caraboidea have five-segmented, two-clawed legs, while those of all other beetles have legs with four segments and a single claw.
Horn placed the Rhynchophora (weevils) in a group distinct from all other beetles, on account of their supposed primitive nature.
Kolbe, on the other hand, insists that the weevils are the most modified of all beetles, being highly specialized as regards their adult structure, and developing from legless maggots exceedingly different from the adult; he regards the Adephaga, with their active armoured larvae with two foot-claws, as the most primitive group of beetles, and there can be little doubt that the likeness between larvae and adult may safely be accepted as a primitive character among insects.
The generalized arrangement of the wing-nervure and the nature of the larva, which is less unlike the adult than in other beetles, distinguish this tribe as primitive, although the perfect insects are, in the more dominant families, distinctly specialized.
Two very small families of aquatic beetles seem to stand at the base of the series, the Amphizoidae, whose larvae are broad and well armoured with FIG.
The beetles are ovoid in shape, with smooth contours, and the elytra fit over the edges of the abdomen so as to enclose a supply of air, available for use when the insect remains under water.
Riding past the pond where there used always to be dozens of women chattering as they rinsed their linen or beat it with wooden beetles, Prince Andrew noticed that there was not a soul about and that the little washing wharf, torn from its place and half submerged, was floating on its side in the middle of the pond.
It is possibly for the purpose of feeding on parasitic mites that book-scorpions lodge themselves beneath the wing-cases of large tropical beetles; and the same explanation, in default of a better, may be extended to their well-known and oft-recorded habit of seizing hold of the legs of horse-flies or other two-winged insects.
In many beetles the hindwings are reduced to mere vestiges useless for flight, or are altogether absent, and in such cases the two elytra are often fused together at the suture; thus organs originally intended for flight have been transformed into an armour-like covering for the beetle's hind-body.
In male beetles, however, the two pairs of genital processes (paramera) belonging to the ninth abdominal segment are always present, though sometimes reduced.
As regards growth after hatching, all beetles undergo a "complete" metamorphosis, the wing-rudiments developing beneath the cuticle throughout the larval stages, and a resting pupal stage intervening between the last larval instal1 and the imago.
The luminous organs of these beetles consist of a specialized part of the fat-body, with an inner opaque and an outer transparent layer.
Coming to the Tertiary we find the Oligocene beds of Aix, of east Prussia (amber) and of Colorado, and the Miocene of Bavaria, especially rich in remains of beetles, most of which can be referred to existing genera.
In the structure of the digestive system, beetles resemble most other mandibulate insects, the food-canal consisting of gullet, crop, gizzard, mid-gut or stomach, intestine and rectum.
The nervous system is remarkably concentrated in some beetles, the abdominal ganglia showing a tendency to become shifted forward and crowded together, and in certain chafers all the thoracic and abdominal ganglia are fused into a single nervecentre situated in the thorax, - a degree of specialization only matched in the insectan class among the Hemiptera and some muscid flies.
The most striking feature in the development of beetles is the great diversity noticeable in the outward form of the larva in different families.
The distribution of many groups of beetles is restricted in correspondence with their habits; the Cerambycidae (longhorns), whose larvae are wood-borers, are absent from timberless regions, and most abundant in the great tropical forests.
The beetles of the British islands afford some very interesting examples of restricted distribution among species.
In general it may be stated that beetles live and feed in almost all the diverse ways possible for insects.
Some of the scavengers, like the burying beetles, inter the bodies of small vertebrates to supply food for themselves and their larvae, or, like the "sacred" beetle of Egypt, collect for the same purpose stores of dung.
Many beetles of different families have become the "unbidden guests" of civilized man, and may be found in dwelling-houses, stores and ships' cargoes, eating food-stuffs, paper, furniture, tobacco and drugs.
Hence we find that beetles of some kind can hold their own anywhere on the earth's surface.
A large number of beetles inhabit the deep limestone caves of Europe and North America, while many genera and some whole families are at home nowhere but in ants' nests.
Most remarkable is the presence of a number of beetles along the seashore between tide-marks, where, sheltered in some secure nook, they undergo immersion twice daily, and have their active life confined to the few hours of the low ebb.
Many beetles make a hissing or chirping sound by rubbing a "scraper," formed by a sharp edge or prominence on some part of their exoskeleton, over a "file" formed by a number of fine ridges situate on an adjacent region.
The file may be on the head - either upper or lower surface - and the scraper formed by the front edge of the prothorax, as in various wood-boring beetles (Anobium and Scolytus).
In a large number of beetles of different families, stridulating areas occur on various segments of the abdomen, and are scraped by the elytra.
Whatever may be the true explanation of stridulating organs in adult beetles, sexual selection can have had nothing to do with the presence of these highly-developed larval structures.
The eggs and larvae of the fire-flies are luminous as well as the perfect beetles.
Such obvious features as the number of segments in the foot and the shape of the feeler were used by the early entomologists for distinguishing the great groups of beetles.
Blind Carabidae form a large proportion of cave dwelling beetles, and several species of great interest live between tide-marks along the seashore.
The beetles are fierce Antenna of Larva of Gyrinus.
The Paussidae are a very remarkable family of small beetles, mostly tropical, found only in ants' nests, or flying by night, and apparently migrating from one nest to another.
It is supposed that these beetles secrete a sweet substance on which the ants feed, but they have been seen to devour the ants' eggs and grubs.
Some of these beetles are brightly coloured, while others are dull black.
The Trichopterygidae, with their delicate narrow fringed wings, are the smallest of all beetles, while the Platypsyllidae consist of only a single species of curious form found on the beaver.
Beetles and larvae are frequently carnivorous in habit, hunting for small insects under stones, or pursuing the soft-skinned grubs of beetles and flies that bore in woody stems or succulent roots.
The Lymexylonidae, a small family of this group, characterized by its slender, undifferentiated feelers and feet, is believed by Lameere to comprise the most primitive of all living beetles, and Sharp lays stress on the undeveloped structure of the tribe generally.
The Lampyridae are a large family, of which the glow-worm (Lampyris) and the "soldier beetles" (Telephorus) are familiar examples.
The beetles are hairy and their larvae well-armoured and often predaceous.
Of the numerous other families of the Clavicornia may be mentioned the Cucujidae and Cryptophagidae, small beetles, examples of which may be found feeding on stored seeds or vegetable refuse, and the Mycetophagidae, which devour fungi.
The Nitidulidae are a large family with 1600 species, among which members of the genus Meligethes are often found in numbers feeding on blossoms, while others live under the bark of trees and prey on the grubs of boring beetles.
The beetles have feelers with eleven segments, whereof the terminal few are thickened so as to form a club.
The most interesting of the Heteromera, and perhaps of all the Coleoptera, are some beetles which pass through two or more larval forms in the course of the life-history (hypermetamorphosis).
The Rhipidophoridae are beetles with short elytra, the feelers pectinate in the malesandserrate in the females.
The wasps are said to leave the larval or pupal Metoecus unmolested, but they are hostile to the developed beetles, which hasten to leave the nest as soon as possible.
The Passalidae are a tropical family of beetles generally considered to be intermediate between stag-beetles and chafers, the enlarged segments of the feeler being capable of close approximation.
The mandibles are strong, adapted for biting the vegetable substances on which these beetles feed, and the palps of the second maxillae have three segments.
Most of the Chrysomelidae are metallic in colour and convex in form; in some the head is concealed beneath the prothorax, and the so-called "tortoise" beetles (Cassidinae) have the elytra raised into a prominent median ridge.