Word.ws English Dictionary

odonate

odonate noun: any carnivorous insect of the order Odonata; a dragonfly or damselfly.

odonate: any carnivorous insect of the order Odonata; a dragonfly or damselfly
Image: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service - Pacific Region's, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

odonate (plural odonates)

  1. Any carnivorous insect of the order Odonata; a dragonfly or damselfly.
    • The proportion of these prey that were odonates can be estimated from the food sample data taken at the Potholes (Chapter Four; Orians and Horn, 1969).1980, Gordon H. Orians, Some Adaptations of Marsh-nesting Blackbirds, page 246
    • Thanks to concern about water birds, these activities have slowed in some regions, and mitigation efforts have provided new wetlands, some of them quite good for odonates.2009, Dennis Paulson, Dragonflies and Damselflies of the West, page 35
    Synonyms:
    dragonfly

Synonyms of odonate

Forms of odonate

pluralodonates

Origin of odonate

From translingual Odonata, from Ancient Greek ὀδούς (odoús, “tooth”), apparently because they have teeth on their mandibles, although most insects have toothed mandibles.

Questions about odonate

What does odonate mean?
Odonate means any carnivorous insect of the order Odonata; a dragonfly or damselfly.
What part of speech is odonate?
Odonate is a noun.
What is the plural of odonate?
The plural of odonate is odonates.

Words near odonate in the dictionary

  1. odometrically
  2. odometry
  3. Odoms
  4. odonatan
  5. odonatans
  6. odonate
  7. odonates
  8. odonatist
  9. odonatists
  10. odonatological
  11. odonatologist

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: odonate (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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