Word.ws English Dictionary

black beetles

black beetles is the plural of black beetle.

Meaning of black beetle

Noun

black beetle (plural black beetles)

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see black, beetle.
  2. A black scarab beetle, later specifically the African black beetle (Heteronychus arator), a serious pest of grasses in New Zealand.
  3. (UK) The oriental cockroach (Blatta orientalis), a large roach from the family Blattidae.
    • ‘I'm not afwaid of anything except black-beetles,’ said the Pussum […].1921, DH Lawrence, Women in Love, Vintage, published 2008, page 65
  4. (New Zealand) A similar roach native to New Zealand, of species Maoriblatta novaeseelandiae (syn. Platyzosteria novaeseelandia); the Māori bug.
    Synonyms:
    Māori bug
  5. An Asiatic rhinoceros beetle (Oryctes rhinoceros), a pest of palm trees in tropical Asia.
  6. A member of the European species Pterostichus nigrita (syn. Feronia nigrita).

Questions about black beetles

What is black beetles the plural of?
Black beetles is the plural of black beetle.

Words near black beetles in the dictionary

  1. black beech
  2. black beer
  3. black beers
  4. black bees
  5. black beetle
  6. black beetles
  7. black belt
  8. black belts
  9. black bile
  10. black bindweed
  11. black birch

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: black beetles (page history and authors); black beetle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “black beetles.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/black_beetles. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.