locust

Inherited from Middle English locuste, locust, from Anglo-Norman locuste, Middle French locuste, and their source, Latin locustam (“locust, crustacean, lobster”, accusative of locusta).^[1] Doublet of langouste.

Noun sense 3 (“kind of tree”), originally referring to the carob (compare locust bean), is based on the resemblance of the trees' beanlike seed pods to the insect and is likely a semantic loan from Ancient Greek ἀκρίς (akrís).^[2]

Noun sense 5 (“mainlander”) is a semantic loan from Cantonese 蝗蟲 / 蝗虫 (wong4 cung4), also meaning "locust".

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈləʊ.kəst/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈloʊ.kəst/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊkəst, -oʊkəst

locust (plural locusts)

2. Any of the grasshoppers, often polyphenic and usually swarming, in the family Acrididae that are very destructive to crops and other vegetation, especially migratory locusts (Locusta migratoria). [from 14th c.]
3. (now historical) A fruit or pod of a carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua). [from 16th c.]
   • 1789, Olaudah Equiano, chapter 9, in The Interesting Narrative, volume I:

     Among other articles, they brought with them a great quantity of locusts, which are a kind of pulse, sweet and pleasant to the palate, and in shape resembling French beans, but longer.

5. Any of various often leguminous trees and shrubs, especially of the genera Robinia and Gleditsia; locust tree. [from 17th c.]
6. A cicada. [from 18th c.]
8. (Hong Kong, derogatory, offensive, ethnic slur) A mainlander.
9. (UK, slang, obsolete) A dose of laudanum.
   • 1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, published 1861:

     I took my flogging like a stone. If I had sung, some of the convicts would have given me some lush with a locust in it (laudanum hocussing), and when I was asleep would have given me a crack on the head that would have laid me straight.

• Sometimes confused with locus.

locust (third-person singular simple present locusts, present participle locusting, simple past and past participle locusted)

1. (intransitive) To come in a swarm.
   • 1875, Alfred Tennyson, Queen Mary: A Drama, London: Henry S. King & Co., →OCLC, (please specify the page):

     This Philip and the black-faced swarms of Spain,
     The hardest, cruellest people in the world,
     Come locusting upon us, eat us up,
     Confiscate lands, goods, money […]

• clouts

locust

1. alternative form of locuste