Word.ws English Dictionary

dung-beetle

dung-beetle is the alternative spelling of dung beetle.

Meaning of dung beetle

Noun

dung beetle (plural dung beetles)

  1. Any of the beetle of the family Scarabaeidae (scarab beetles), especially of the subfamilies Scarabaeinae and Aphodiinae, noted for rolling dung into balls for use as food or as brooding chambers.
    • "They went in together. His was accepted and mine rejected. The title of his paper was 'The Reproductive System of the Dung-Beetle'." There was a general laugh.1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019
  2. Any of the true dung beetles of subfamily Scarabaeinae.

Forms of dung-beetle

pluraldung-beetles

Questions about dung-beetle

What is dung-beetle the alternative spelling of?
Dung-beetle is the alternative spelling of dung beetle.

Words near dung-beetle in the dictionary

  1. dung moss
  2. dung puncher
  3. dung punchers
  4. dung tag
  5. dung tags
  6. dung-beetle
  7. dung-beetles
  8. dung-flies
  9. dung-fly
  10. dung-heap
  11. dung-heaps

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dung-beetle (page history and authors); dung 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: “dung-beetle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dung-beetle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.