lanternfly
lanternfly noun: any of various insects in the family Fulgoridae, especially in the genera Fulgora and Pyrops, with brilliant coloration.
Noun
lanternfly (plural lanternflies)
Forms of lanternfly
| plural | lanternflies |
|---|
Origin of lanternfly
From lantern + fly. The name came about because of claims that some Fulgoridae are luminous at night. European and Euro-American writers, including Maria Sibylla Merian and Carl Linnaeus, said that the claims came from Indigenous peoples in South America. (Merian had visited Suriname.) Various names, including lanternfly, the specific name laternaria, and various other (current or former) scientific names, came out of this belief. Compare names for insects that do in fact glow at night: firefly, lightning bug, glow fly, and glowworm.
Words formed from lanternfly
Questions about lanternfly
- What does lanternfly mean?
- Lanternfly means any of various insects in the family Fulgoridae, especially in the genera Fulgora and Pyrops, with brilliant coloration.
- What part of speech is lanternfly?
- Lanternfly is a noun.
- What is the plural of lanternfly?
- The plural of lanternfly is lanternflies.
Words near lanternfly in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: lanternfly (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: “lanternfly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lanternfly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.