Meaning & use
mosquito
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Meaning
nouncountable
A small flying insect, the female of which bites people and animals to feed on blood.
Grammar: Countable; use 'a mosquito' or 'mosquitoes'. The plural is usually 'mosquitoes' in both US and UK English.
Patterns
- a mosquito bite
- mosquitoes spread [disease]
- be bitten by a mosquito
I got several mosquito bites while camping.
Mosquitoes can spread diseases like malaria and dengue fever.
A mosquito buzzed around my ear all night.
Word forms
| plural | mosquitoes |
|---|
Common combinations
- mosquito bite
- The mosquito bite on my arm is very itchy.
- mosquito net
- We slept under a mosquito net to avoid bites.
- mosquito repellent
- Put on some mosquito repellent before you go outside.
- mosquito-borne disease
- Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease.
Synonyms and how they differ
- skeeter
- An informal American word for mosquito, common in some regions.
Word family
- mosquito net noun
- A fine net hung over a bed to keep mosquitoes away.
Commonly confused: mosquito or mosque?
mosquito vs mosque
Mosque is a building for Muslim prayer; mosquito is the insect. Remember the 't' in mosquito.
Practice
I always get itchy ___ when I sleep outside in summer.
Choose one answer.
'Mosquito bites' is the correct phrase. 'Mosque bites' is meaningless, and 'mosquitoes bites' is wrong because the plural noun cannot modify another noun that way.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “mosquito”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.