yellow jacket
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.16 in modern English
31
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
4
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A predatory wasp with alternating black and yellow stripes around the abdomen, usually of the genera Vespula or Dolichovespula.
American usage
noun
A capsule of pentobarbital sodium (or sometimes other barbiturates), especially when used as a recreational drug.
Slang
noun
Synonym of yellow vest (“member of a French protest movement which started in late 2018”).
Example Sentences
- "Yellowjackets (Vespula spp.) and paper wasps (Polistes spp.) are beneficial insects in that they are predators of house flies and insect pests that damage landscape trees and crops."
- "The eastern yellowjacket (V. maeulifrons) and the hybrid yellowjacket (V. flavopilosa) are major picnic and campsite pests, especially in the fall in the eastern United States.[…]Many people are stung while getting a drink of water from fountains frequented by yellowjackets seeking water."
- "Vespula and Dolichovespula, collectively called yellowjackets, are broadly distributed in subarctic and temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere, extending no farther into the tropics than high elevations at the temperate/tropical boundary (Hunt et al. 2001a).[…]The wasp in your summertime can of soda or beer is a yellowjacket."
- "Rotting fruit lying on the ground in the back yard are drawing yellowjackets, got to get rid of them before one of the dogs get stung."
- "Yellow-jacket wasps breed quickly to maximise the use of available resources, and trying to outpace their productivity is nearly impossible. / For instance, a 2002 study showed that 80 traps around a 20-hectare water park failed to control yellow-jackets; and in 2006 after 42,367 yellow-jackets were slaughtered at a health spa, 91 stings were still reported."
- "Mr. Barron immediately retreated, and later sprayed hornet killer on the nest with his son. He said that just angered the yellow jackets, the highly aggressive wasps that live in such colonies. Mr. Barron was stung 11 times."
Etymology
From yellow + jacket. * (pentobarbital sodium): Named after the yellow capsule of the Nembutal brand.
Usage
Inflected Forms
Phrases
eastern yellowjacket