GNAT

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does gnat mean? 

• GNAT (noun)
  The noun GNAT has 2 senses:

1. any of various small biting flies: midges; biting midges; black flies; sand flies

2. (British usage) mosquito

  Familiarity information: GNAT used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• GNAT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Any of various small biting flies: midges; biting midges; black flies; sand flies

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Hypernyms ("gnat" is a kind of...):

dipteran; dipteron; dipterous insect; two-winged insects (insects having usually a single pair of functional wings (anterior pair) with the posterior pair reduced to small knobbed structures and mouth parts adapted for sucking or lapping or piercing)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "gnat"):

biting midge; no-see-um; punkey; punkie; punky (minute two-winged insect that sucks the blood of mammals and birds and other insects)

midge (minute two-winged mosquito-like fly lacking biting mouthparts; appear in dancing swarms especially near water)

psychodid (a fly of the family Psychodidae)

Phlebotomus papatasii; sand fly; sandfly (any of various small dipterous flies; bloodsucking females can transmit sandfly fever and leishmaniasis)

black fly; blackfly; buffalo gnat (small blackish stout-bodied biting fly having aquatic larvae; sucks the blood of birds as well as humans and other mammals)

Sense 2

Meaning:

(British usage) mosquito

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Hypernyms ("gnat" is a kind of...):

mosquito (two-winged insect whose female has a long proboscis to pierce the skin and suck the blood of humans and animals)

 Context examples 

When the gnat had heard that, she flew away again, and revealed everything, down to the minutest detail, to the willow-wren.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Orthobunyaviruses are mostly transmitted by gnats and cause encephalitis in humans.

(Orthobunyavirus, NCI Thesaurus)

And the little gnats of men sting his memory when they get their very bread and butter from the technical application of his ideas.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Margaret seemed to find it a little hard to tell hers, and waved a brake before her face, as if to disperse imaginary gnats, while she said slowly, I should like a lovely house, full of all sorts of luxurious things—nice food, pretty clothes, handsome furniture, pleasant people, and heaps of money.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

They went across divides in summer blizzards, shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains between the timber line and the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid swarming gnats and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers picked strawberries and flowers as ripe and fair as any the Southland could boast.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

The gnat, who was the most crafty, flew into the forest where the enemy was assembled, and hid herself beneath a leaf of the tree where the password was to be announced.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

It is like the dead-march of a gnat amid the trumpeting of elephants and the roaring of lions.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)