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WASP 1 or Wasp (wŏsp, wôsp)
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n.
A white person of Protestant English or other Northern European ancestry, especially one belonging to the American upper class.
[W(hite) A(nglo-)S(axon) P(rotestant).]
WASPy adj.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
 
WASP 2 or Wasp (wäsp)
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n.
A member of Women's Airforce Service Pilots, organized during World War II as part of the US Army Air Forces to ferry aircraft and to test new aircraft. The organization was disbanded in 1944.
[From W(omen's) A(irforce) S(ervice) P(ilots).]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
 
wasp (wŏsp, wôsp)
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n.
Any of numerous social or solitary hymenopterans of the suborder Apocrita, especially of the family Vespidae, that characteristically have a slender hairless body with a constricted abdomen, two pairs of membranous wings, a mouth adapted for biting or sucking, and in the females an ovipositor sometimes modified as a sting.
[Middle English waspe, from Old English wæps, wæsp.]
waspy adj.
(click for a larger image)
wasp
European paper wasp
Polistes dominula
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
 

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

    Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

    Indo-European Roots

    Semitic Roots

    The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

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