Word.ws English Dictionary

scare-sleep

scare-sleep noun: an insect, a lanternfly (Fulgora laternaria).

Noun

scare-sleep (plural scare-sleeps)

  1. (obsolete) An insect, a lanternfly (Fulgora laternaria).
    • The other was a large fly, which Madam Merian, who gives a drawing of it, calls the vielleur, but which I have generally heard called the ſcare-ſleep by the Dutch.1796, J[ohn] G[abriel] Stedman, Narrative of a Five Years’ Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the Wild Coast of South America; […], volume II, London: J[oseph] Johnson...
    • The great lantern-fly (Fulgora laternaria), from its noise in the evening—nearly resembling the sound of a cymbal, or razor-grinder when at work—is called Scare-sleep by the Dutch in Guiana.1828, William Kirby, William Spence, “On the Noises Produced by Insects”, in An Introduction to Entomology, volume II, page 397

Forms of scare-sleep

pluralscare-sleeps

Questions about scare-sleep

What does scare-sleep mean?
Scare-sleep means an insect, a lanternfly (Fulgora laternaria).
What part of speech is scare-sleep?
Scare-sleep is a noun.
What is the plural of scare-sleep?
The plural of scare-sleep is scare-sleeps.

Words near scare-sleep in the dictionary

  1. scare-line
  2. scare-lines
  3. scare-quote
  4. scare-quotes
  5. scare-roused
  6. scare-sleep
  7. scare-sleeps
  8. scare-the-birds
  9. scareability
  10. scareable
  11. scarebabe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scare-sleep (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “scare-sleep.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scare-sleep. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.