Word.ws English Dictionary

xylotomous

xylotomous adjective: that bores or cuts into wood, as with certain insects.

Adjective

xylotomous (not comparable)

  1. That bores or cuts into wood, as with certain insects.
    • Real estate agents in the southern U.S. routinely handle questions about the presence of xylotomous insects, primarily termites.
    • Wooden structures in the tropics must be chemically treated to repel xylotomous pests.

Origin of xylotomous

Ancient Greek ξύλον (xúlon, “wood”) + τομία (tomía, “cut”), from τέμνειν (témnein, “to cut”)

Questions about xylotomous

What does xylotomous mean?
Xylotomous means that bores or cuts into wood, as with certain insects.
What part of speech is xylotomous?
Xylotomous is an adjective.

Words near xylotomous in the dictionary

  1. xylotiles
  2. xylotomic
  3. xylotomically
  4. xylotomist
  5. xylotomists
  6. xylotomous
  7. xylotomy
  8. xylotransferase
  9. xylotransferases
  10. xylotriose
  11. xylotrioses

Source and license

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