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gnat

Pronunciation: /næt/

The English word “gnat” has 2 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A biting insect, especially a mosquito.
  2. An annoying person.

Etymology

From Middle English gnat, from Old English gnætt (“gnat; midge; mosquito”), from Proto-West Germanic *gnatt, *gnattu, from Proto-Germanic *gnattaz, *gnattuz (“gnat”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰneHdʰn-, *gʰneHd- (“to gnaw; scratch”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰen- (“to gnaw; bite; scratch; grind”). Cognate with Low German Gnatte (“gnat”), dialectal Swedish gnatt (“mosquito”), German Gnatz…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.