Word.ws English Dictionary

dung beetles

dung beetles is the plural 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.

Questions about dung beetles

What is dung beetles the plural of?
Dung beetles is the plural of dung beetle.

Words near dung beetles in the dictionary

  1. Dunford
  2. Dunford Bridge
  3. Dunfords
  4. dung
  5. dung beetle
  6. dung beetles
  7. dung flies
  8. dung fly
  9. dung fork
  10. dung forks
  11. dung funnel

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dung beetles (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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