Results

Definition of gnat : 1. A blood- sucking dipterous fly, of the genus Culex, undergoing a metamorphosis in water. The females have a proboscis armed with needlelike organs for penetrating the skin of animals. These are wanting in the males. In America they are generally called mosquitoes. See Mosquito.
2. Any fly resembling a Culex in form or habits; esp., in America, a small biting fly of the genus Simulium and allies, as the buffalo gnat, the black fly, etc.

Synonyms:

beetle, bloodsucker

dung beetle, daddy longlegs, roach, may fly, bookworm, deer fly, ladybug, firefly, cockroach, dragonfly, bedbug, praying mantis, fruit fly, tiger moth, spider, silverfish, mosquito, katydid, gadfly, ant, louse, cicada, scorpion, termite, bee, midge, black widow, horney, tick, nit, chinch, mite, millipede, cricket, flea, stinkbug, centipede, June bug, horntail, tarantula, tsetse fly, aphid, blowfly, scarab, fly, butterfly, wasp, housefly, horsefly, botfly, chigger, moth, mantis, boll weevil, locust, yellow jacket, grasshopper, earwig, bluebottle

Usage examples:

• She insisted on going back to the palace, so, as she would fly to the fire like a gnat, and I would not have her risk being burnt, I tied her up fast." - "The Complete Historical Romances of Georg Ebers", Georg Ebers.
• My soul is caught in the web of the moon, Like a shrilling gnat in a spider's web. - "Eight Harvard Poets", E. Estlin Cummings S. Foster Damon J. R. Dos Passos Robert Hillyer R. S. Mitchell.
• One has attuned one's nerves to the leading of a forlorn hope, and a gnat gets into one's eye, or a little cinder grit, and there it sticks; and there is no question of leading any forlorn hope, after all, and never will be; all that was in the imagination only: it is always gnats and cinder grits, gnats and cinder grits. - "Peter Ibbetson", George Du Maurier.