footganger
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A juvenile locust or grasshopper while in its wingless or flightless phase.
Example Sentences
- "Midway between Bloomfontein and Kimberley, while riding with Major Beresford, of the South African Constabulary, at the foot of some low hills in the Karoo bush, I came across great numbers of the footgangers."
- "We passed several swarms of locusts in the footganger stage; but owing to the lateness of their appearance the damage they effected was slight, though we met many people coming from the west, whose crops had been utterly destroyed."
Etymology
Perhaps from Dutch or Afrikaans voetganger (“pedestrian”, literally “foot-goer”), or a partial calque of German Fußgänger (“pedestrian”), equivalent to foot + ganger (“goer, walker, stepper”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: -