Honeybee
According to Steve Jackson, this is “Our old friend Apis mellifera, getting very happy about an oxalis in a sidewalk planter.”
So, I bought a book a few months ago called “A Dictionary of the Roots and Combining Forms of Scientific Words”. It rocks. For example, from this book we discover that meli- means “honey” and -ifer- means “bearing, producing or plundering.” Apis is in fact simply the Latin word for “bee”. The word is not merely a name, however: its base form api- means “point” or “tip”, so when you run it all together you get “honey-plundering pointy bug”, which sort of explains why Latin died out.
Okay, before you relegate me to the “less reliable than Wikipedia” category, the name actually translates to “honeymaking bee.” (The name apis really does mean “point” or “tip”, however, and I think it’s awesome that the ancient Lats¹ really did go around calling them “pointies”. About the only thing funnier would be if there was a creature named “stingme”.)
¹ You know, the people who spoke ancient Latin. Not to be confused with their neighbors, the ancient Delts, or their longtime rivals, the ancient Glutes.
Vincent said,
April 30, 2008 @ 3:47 pm
That’s not so weird. We have bugs called noseeums - biting midges, but they are called noseeums because you never see them, only hear or feel them.