Word.ws English Dictionary

blattoid

US/ˈblæ.tɔɪd/

blattoid noun: any member of the Blattoidea superfamily of cockroaches and termites.

blattoid: any member of the Blattoidea superfamily of cockroaches and termites
Image: Termiteman, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

blattoid (plural blattoids)

  1. Any member of the Blattoidea superfamily of cockroaches and termites.
    • This result, however, is much younger than some “roachoid” fossils and clearly invalidates the hypothesis suggesting that winged “blattoids” would date back to the Devonian.2015 June 22, Frédéric Legendre, André Nel, Gavin J. Svenson, Tony Robillard, Roseli Pellens, Philippe Grandcolas, “Phylogeny of Dictyoptera: Dating the Origin of Cockroaches, Praying Mantises and...
    • However, a subgroup analysis (by order) indicated that the DGC facilitated gaseous exchange in dipterans (0.43 ± 0.34; estimate ± 95% CI; p = 0.01), but not in blattoids (p = 0.89) or orthopterans (p = 0.57) (Figure 5a).2022 January 22, Seun O. Oladipupo, Alan E. Wilson, Xing Ping Hu, Arthur G. Appel, “Why Do Insects Close Their Spiracles? A Meta-Analytic Evaluation of the Adaptive Hypothesis of Discontinuous Gas...

Adjective

blattoid (comparative more blattoid, superlative most blattoid)

  1. Relating to the Blattoidea, comprised of cockroaches and termites.
    • This age is congruent with the presence of “blattoid” ootheca in the Late Carboniferous, suggesting that Dictyoptera with reduced ovipositors were already present at that time, coexisting with “roachoids” with long external ovipositors.2015 June 22, Frédéric Legendre, André Nel, Gavin J. Svenson, Tony Robillard, Roseli Pellens, Philippe Grandcolas, “Phylogeny of Dictyoptera: Dating the Origin of Cockroaches, Praying Mantises and...
    • Within the animal kingdom, complex brains and high intelligence have evolved several to many times independently, e.g. among ecdysozoans in some groups of insects (e.g. blattoid, dipteran, hymenopteran taxa), among lophotrochozoans in octopodid molluscs, among vertebrates in teleosts (e.g....2015 December 19, Gerhard Roth, “Convergent evolution of complex brains and high intelligence”, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London

Forms of blattoid

Noun
pluralblattoids
Adjective
comparativemore blattoid
superlativemost blattoid

Origin of blattoid

Borrowed from translingual Blattoidea, from the type genus of Blatta, from Latin blatta (“photophobic bug”). Further etymology unclear.

Questions about blattoid

What does blattoid mean?
Blattoid means any member of the Blattoidea superfamily of cockroaches and termites.
What part of speech is blattoid?
Blattoid can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce blattoid?
Blattoid is pronounced /ˈblæ.tɔɪd/ (US).
What is the plural of blattoid?
The plural of blattoid is blattoids.

Words near blattoid in the dictionary

  1. Blattnerphone
  2. Blattnerphones
  3. Blattners
  4. blattodean
  5. blattodeans
  6. blattoid
  7. blattoids
  8. blatts
  9. Blatz
  10. Blatzes
  11. Blau

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blattoid (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: “blattoid.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blattoid. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.