Word.ws English Dictionary

emmet

/ˈɛmɪt/

emmet noun: an ant.

Noun

emmet (plural emmets)

  1. (archaic, dialectal) An ant.
    • He told him that he saw a vast multitude and a promiscuous, their habitations like molehills, the men as emmets […], New York Review of Books, 2001, p.47
    • 1666, Dr. Edmund King, Philosophical Transactions (1665-1678) Observations Concerning Emmets or Ants, Their Eggs, Production, Progress, Coming to Maturity, Use, &c
  2. (Cornwall, derogatory) A tourist.

Proper noun capitalized: Emmet

Emmet

  1. A surname.
  2. A male given name transferred from the surname.
  3. A ghost town in Queensland, Australia.
  4. A city in Nevada and Hempstead, Arkansas.
  5. A village in Holt County, Nebraska.
  6. An unincorporated community in McLean County, North Dakota.
  7. A ghost town in Union County, South Dakota.
  8. A town in Dodge County, Wisconsin.
  9. A town in Marathon County, Wisconsin.

emmet meaning in Tamil

emmet in Tamil

கறையான் உள்ளிட்ட, சமூகமாக வாழும் பூச்சிகள்

Examples of emmet in a sentence

  • Once a dream did weave a shade / O'er my angel-guarded bed / That an emmet lost its way / Where on grass methought I lay.1789, William Blake, “A Dream”, in Songs of Innocence:
  • [A benignity that] to the emmet gives / Her foresight, and intelligence that makes / The tiny creatures strong by social league.1814, William Wordsworth, The Excursion, IV.430:
  • We are scurrying emmets or pismires with our sad little comedies.1993, Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford:

Forms of emmet

Noun
pluralemmets
Proper noun
alternative formEmmett

Plural of emmet: emmets

Origin of emmet

From Middle English ampte, amte, amete, amote, ante, emete, emot, emotte, empt, empte, from Old English ǣmete, ǣmette, ǣmytte, ǣmætte (“ant”), from Proto-West Germanic *āmaitijā (“ant”), of uncertain and debated origin (q.v.), but probably from Proto-Germanic *ē- (“off, away”) + *maitaną (“to cut”), from Proto-Indo-European *meh₂y- (“to cut”). Doublet of ant. Cognates Cognate with Yola emotee, emothee (“ant”), West Frisian eamel, eamelder, eameler (“ant”), Alemannic German Ameisse (“ant”), Bavarian Åmasn, Åmeisn (“ant”), Cimbrian amasa (“ant”), Dutch emt (“ant”), German Ameise, Emse (“ant”), Low German Emk (“ant”), Vilamovian ömys (“ant”), Yiddish אַמייזע (ameyze, “ant”).

From a Middle English diminutive of the female given name Emma.

Words formed from emmet

Questions about emmet

What does emmet mean?
Emmet means an ant.
What is emmet in Tamil?
Emmet in Tamil is கறையான் உள்ளிட்ட, சமூகமாக வாழும் பூச்சிகள். See Emmet meaning in Tamil.
How do you use emmet in a sentence?
Once a dream did weave a shade / O'er my angel-guarded bed / That an emmet lost its way / Where on grass methought I lay.
What part of speech is emmet?
Emmet can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce emmet?
Emmet is pronounced /ˈɛmɪt/.
What is the plural of emmet?
The plural of emmet is emmets.

Words near emmet in the dictionary

  1. Emmerts
  2. emmesh
  3. emmeshed
  4. emmeshes
  5. emmeshing
  6. emmet
  7. Emmet County
  8. emmetrope
  9. emmetropes
  10. emmetropia
  11. emmetropias

Source and license

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