Word.ws English Dictionary

peppered moth

peppered moth noun: a light-coloured species of night-flying moth, Biston betularia.

Noun

peppered moth (plural peppered moths)

  1. A light-coloured species of night-flying moth, Biston betularia.
    • At the start of the Industrial Revolution, the common, light-coloured peppered moth stood out in the soot-covered landscape around coal plants.2015 May 21, Victoria Schlesinger, “Backyard evolution”, in Aeon, archived from the original on 06 Jan 2018

Forms of peppered moth

pluralpeppered moths

Questions about peppered moth

What does peppered moth mean?
Peppered moth means a light-coloured species of night-flying moth, Biston betularia.
What part of speech is peppered moth?
Peppered moth is a noun.
What is the plural of peppered moth?
The plural of peppered moth is peppered moths.

Words near peppered moth in the dictionary

  1. peppercorn rents
  2. peppercorns
  3. peppercorny
  4. peppercress
  5. peppered
  6. peppered moth
  7. peppered moths
  8. peppered up
  9. Pepperell
  10. pepperer
  11. pepperers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: peppered moth (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: “peppered moth.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/peppered_moth. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.