mosquito: [16] Mosquito comes ultimately from the Latin word for ‘fly’, musca (this went back to an Indo-European base *mu-, probably imitative of the sound of humming, which also produced English midge [OE], and hence its derivative midget [19] – originally a ‘tiny sand-fly’). Musca became Spanish mosca, whose diminutive form reached English as mosquito – etymologically a ‘small fly’. (The Italian descendant of musca, incidentally, is also mosca, and its diminutive, moschetto, was applied with black humour to the ‘bolt of a crossbow’. From it English gets musket [16].) => midge, midget, musket
mosquito (n.)
1580s, from Spanish mosquito "little gnat," diminutive of mosca "fly," from Latin musca "fly," from PIE root *mu- "gnat, fly," imitative of insect buzzing (compare Sanskrit maksa-, Greek myia, Old English mycg, Modern English midge, Old Church Slavonic mucha), perhaps imitative of the sound of humming insects.
例文
1. I threw aside my mosquito net and jumped out of bed.
蚊帳を横に振って、ベッドから飛び降りた。
2.Avoiding mosquito bites is easier said than done.
蚊に刺されないようにするのは難しい。
3.A mosquito had bitten her and her arm had swollen up.
蚊に刺され、腕が腫れてきた。
4.He started reading when he was knee-high to a mosquito .