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pyralis

pyralis noun: a species of firefly, Photinus pyralis.

pyralis: a species of firefly, Photinus pyralis
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Noun

pyralis (plural pyralises or pyralides)

  1. A species of firefly, Photinus pyralis
    • As Loeb has shown by many experiments, the phototropic phenomena of animals differ not at all from those of plants, and they carry no more psychism in a polyp or in a pyralis than in a geranium or in a volvox.1922, E.-L. Bouvier, The Psychic Life of Insects, page 9
    • If you have an opportunity to experiment with Photinus pyralis, try the following: Start a male toward you by answering him properly, that is, as a pyralis female would answer him, once or twice.1968, The Conservationist - Volumes 23-24, page 169
  2. A moth of the genus Pyralis.
    • This once happened in a hemp field destroyed by a pyralis, described by me in a special memoir.1850, Gardeners Chronicle & New Horticulturist - Volume 10, page 277
    • At first there was a belief that the caterpillar was that of a pyralis like that which caused such great loss to beet growers in southern Russia, Roumania and North America.1907, Sugar - Volume 9, page 333

Examples of pyralis in a sentence

  • When a pyralis female sees a flash of the appropriate characteristics, she waits 2 seconds and then emits her own half-second flash.1986, Robert W. Mitchell, Nicholas S. Thompson, Deception: Perspectives on Human and Nonhuman Deceit, →ISBN, page 114:
  • What would have been the opinion of the public, seeing e.g. a butterfly and a pyralis placed in the same genus ?1962, Memorie della Società entomologica italiana:

Forms of pyralis

pluralpyralises
pluralpyralides

Questions about pyralis

What does pyralis mean?
Pyralis means a species of firefly, Photinus pyralis.
How do you use pyralis in a sentence?
When a pyralis female sees a flash of the appropriate characteristics, she waits 2 seconds and then emits her own half-second flash.
What part of speech is pyralis?
Pyralis is a noun.
What is the plural of pyralis?
The plural of pyralis is pyralises.

Words near pyralis in the dictionary

  1. pyralid
  2. pyralid moth
  3. pyralid moths
  4. pyralides
  5. pyralids
  6. pyralis
  7. pyralises
  8. pyraloid
  9. pyraloids
  10. pyralspite
  11. pyralspites

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pyralis (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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