Word.ws English Dictionary

wasp

UK/wɒsp//wɑsp/

wasp noun: any of many types of stinging flying insect resembling a hornet. Also the alternative letter-case form of WASP.

wasp: any of many types of stinging flying insect resembling a hornet
Image: Richard Bartz, Munich aka Makro Freak, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

wasp (plural wasps)

  1. Any of many types of stinging flying insect resembling a hornet.
  2. Any of the members of suborder Apocrita, excepting the ants (family Formicidae) and bees (clade Anthophila).
    1. Any of the members of the family Vespidae.
  3. A person who behaves in an angry or insolent way, hence waspishly.

Verb

wasp (third-person singular simple present wasps, present participle wasping, simple past and past participle wasped)

  1. (transitive) To move like a wasp; to buzz.

Noun (2) capitalized: WASP

WASP (plural WASPs)

  1. (US, abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, a member of the supposed ruling class of America.
    • Bill got to college only by dint of support from a female relative and heiress (a useful WASP resource) and by scholarships, then a symbol of WASP entitlement.1989 March 19, Elizabeth Janeway, “The Brotherhood of the WASP”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 24 Jan 2022
    • Joseph Alsop, the acerbic columnist she married in 1961, called his crowd “the ever-diminishing group of survivors of the WASP ascendancy.” It was a world of perfect manners and closely held power, not hugs and meaningful exchanges.1993 October 31, Maureen Dowd, quoting Joseph Alsop, “The WASP Descendancy”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 24 Jan 2022
  2. (abbreviation, historical, initialism) Initialism of Women Airforce Service Pilots.

Noun (3) capitalized: Wasp

Wasp (plural Wasps)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of WASP.
    • Purists like to confine Wasps to descendants of the British Isles; less exacting analysts are willing to throw in Scandinavians, Netherlanders and Germans. At the narrowest, Wasps form a select band of well-heeled, well-descended members of the Eastern Establishment; at the widest, they include...1969 January 17, “Essay: Are the WASPS Coming Back? Have They Ever Been Away?”, in Time, →ISSN

Also used as

wasp is also the alternative letter-case form of WASP.

wasp meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

wasp in Hindi

insect
बरैया baraiyā, ततैया tataiyā, हड्डा haḍḍā

wasp in Urdu

insect
تتیا tataiyā

wasp in Bengali

insect
বোলতা bōlota

wasp in Malayalam

insect
കടന്നൽ kaṭannal
More languagesFewer languages
wasp in Gujarati
ભમરી bhamrī
wasp in Assamese
বৰল borol
wasp in Tagalog
putakti, lulumbo, hinlulumbo
wasp in Arabic
دَبُّور dabbūr, زُنْبُور zunbūr
wasp in Malay
tebuan, penyengat
wasp in Indonesian
tawon
wasp in Persian
زنبور zanbur, گبت gabt
wasp in Thai
ตัวต่อ dtua dtɔ̀ɔ, ต่อ dtɔ̀ɔ
wasp in Vietnamese
ong bắp cày
wasp in Myanmar
နကျယ်ကောင် na.kyaikaung
Sindhi
ڏينڀُو ḏembhū

Examples of wasp in a sentence

  • Our shed has several insect infestations, including ants, yellowjackets, and wasps.
  • Son of a gun! I just got stung by a wasp!
  • The two bi-planes swirled around each other like angry wasps in a violent dogfight.

All 40 example sentences with wasp

Forms of wasp

Noun
pluralwasps
alternative formwaps
pluralWASPs
alternative formWasp
alternative formwasp
pluralWasps
Verb
third-person singular presentwasps
present participlewasping
past participlewasped
pastwasped

Plural of wasp: wasps

Origin of wasp

Inherited from Middle English wappes, waps, wasp, waspe, from Old English wæfs, wæps, wæsp, from Proto-West Germanic *wapsu, from Proto-Germanic *wapsō (“wasp”), from Proto-Indo-European *wóbʰseh₂ (“wasp”), from *webʰ- (“to braid, weave”), referring to the insect's woven nests. Cognates Cognate with North Frisian wesp (“wasp”), Saterland Frisian Häspe (“wasp”), West Frisian waps (“wasp”), Alemannic German Wespi (“wasp”), Bavarian Weps, Wepsn (“wasp”), Cimbrian bèspa (“wasp”), Dutch and Vilamovian wesp (“wasp”), German Wespe (“wasp”), Low German Weps, Wepse (“wasp”), Yiddish וועספּ (vesp), וועספּע (vespe, “wasp”), Danish hveps (“wasp”), Norwegian Bokmål veps (“wasp”), Norwegian Nynorsk kvefs (“wasp”); also Cornish goghi (“wasp”), Irish foich, foiche, puch (“wasp”), Welsh gwchi (“drone”), Latin vespa (“wasp”), Greek ανυφαίνω (anyfaíno), υφαίνω (yfaíno, “to weave”), Albanian vej (“to weave”), Latvian lapsene (“wasp”), Lithuanian vapsvà (“wasp”), Old Prussian wobse (“wasp”), Belarusian аса́ (asá, “wasp”), Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, and Ukrainian оса́ (osá, “wasp”), Czech vosa (“wasp”), Polish, Slovene, and Slovak osa (“wasp”), Serbo-Croatian о̀са, òsa (“wasp”), Armenian մոզ (moz...

Words formed from wasp

Phrases with wasp

5 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with wasp

Questions about wasp

What does wasp mean?
Wasp means any of many types of stinging flying insect resembling a hornet.
What is wasp in Hindi?
Wasp in Hindi is बरैया (baraiyā), ततैया (tataiyā), हड्डा (haḍḍā). See Wasp meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is wasp?
Wasp can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce wasp?
Wasp is pronounced /wɒsp/ (UK).
What is the plural of wasp?
The plural of wasp is wasps.

Words near wasp in the dictionary

  1. Wasney
  2. wasnt
  3. WASO
  4. Wason
  5. Wasons
  6. wasp
  7. wasp around
  8. wasp beetle
  9. wasp beetles
  10. wasp moth
  11. wasp moths

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wasp (page history and authors); WASP (page history and authors); Wasp (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-wasp.ogg.

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