Meaning & use
yellow jacket
Last updated
Meaning
nouncountableAmerican
A small stinging insect with bright yellow and black stripes, common in North America.
Grammar: Countable: one yellow jacket, several yellow jackets.
Patterns
- a yellow jacket sting
- be stung by a yellow jacket
A yellow jacket landed on my sandwich at the picnic.
Yellow jackets build their nests in the ground or in old walls.
He was stung by a yellow jacket while mowing the lawn.
Word forms
| plural | yellow jackets |
|---|
Common combinations
- a yellow jacket sting
- A yellow jacket sting can be painful for a few hours.
- be stung by a yellow jacket
- She was stung by a yellow jacket near the trash can.
- a yellow jacket nest
- We found a yellow jacket nest under the porch.
- swarm of yellow jackets
- A swarm of yellow jackets chased us away from the fruit.
Synonyms and how they differ
- wasp
- The British and more general word for this kind of insect; yellow jacket is the specific American term for the yellow-and-black species.
- hornet
- A larger, usually more aggressive relative; hornets are bigger and often build hanging nests, while yellow jackets are smaller and often nest in the ground.
Commonly confused: yellow jacket or yellow vest?
yellow jacket vs yellow vest
A yellow vest is a piece of safety clothing; a yellow jacket is an insect. The similar sound can cause confusion in fast speech.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'yellow jacket' correctly?
Choose one answer.
In American English a yellow jacket is a stinging insect, so it can fly and buzz. The other sentences describe a piece of clothing, which would normally be called a yellow jacket only in the sense of a jacket that is yellow, but they are not the insect meaning tested here.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “yellow jacket”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.