Word.ws English Dictionary

cockroaches

cockroaches is the plural of cockroach.

Meaning of cockroach

Noun

cockroach (plural cockroaches)

  1. Any black or brown straight-winged insect of the order Blattodea that is not a termite.
    • Then there were cockroach hunts; we chased them out of their haunts, where at night they busily devoured currants, jam, and sugar; in fact their diet was far more varied than ours, for they made plentiful meals off our boots, the coverings of our books, and any stray pieces of flannel that came in...1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 121
    Synonyms:
    roach
  2. (derogatory, slang) Term of abuse.
    • I want a divorce, you cockroach!
    Synonyms:
    roach, scum
  3. (derogatory, offensive, slang) A person or a member of a group of people regarded as undesirable and rapidly procreating.
    • During the Rwandan genocide, Hutu genocidaires labelled Tutsis as cockroaches and called for their extermination.
  4. (Australia, derogatory, especially, humorous, slang) A person from New South Wales.
  5. (Australia, obsolete, slang) A hard lump of brown sugar.

Phrases with cockroaches

Questions about cockroaches

What is cockroaches the plural of?
Cockroaches is the plural of cockroach.

Words near cockroaches in the dictionary

  1. cockroach taxi
  2. cockroach taxis
  3. cockroach theory
  4. cockroach wasp
  5. cockroach wasps
  6. cockroaches
  7. cockroaches of the sea
  8. cockroachicide
  9. cockroachicides
  10. cockroachlike
  11. cockroachy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cockroaches (page history and authors); cockroach (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.

Last updated:

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