mallophagan
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
19
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A chewing louse, any louse of the now obsolete suborder Mallophaga, any true louse that is not a sucking louse.
Example Sentences
- "As a rule, mallophagans are host-specific, each species being restricted and adapted to a single bird species or groups of closely related bird species."
- "Most are associated with birds (although at least one hundred species deign to dine on mammalian body tissues); the majority of mallophagans on birds (and hence the majority of mallophagans in general) have a pair of well-developed claws on the tips of their tarsi."
- "While these mouthparts are not primarily designed to pierce skin some mallophagans do feed on blood. Menacanthus stramineus, a present-day mallophagan, feeds at the base of feathers or on the skin of the chicken."
Etymology
From Translingual Mallophaga + English -an.