cricket

/ˈkrɪkɪt/

/ˈkrɪkɪt/

Other forms: crickets; cricketing; cricketed

A cricket is a chirping insect that resembles a grasshopper. Cricket is also a popular British sport played with a ball and a flat bat. A cricket might be on the cricket field, but it’s too little to throw the ball.

Crickets have small wings and antennae, and while they don't fly, they can hop far. In some places, it's common to keep a cricket as a pet — and in other places, crickets are eaten and considered crispy delicacies. If you ever get a cricket mixed up with a grasshopper, remember that crickets are usually brown and grasshoppers are green. The root of the insect is criquer, "creak or crackle," and the sport comes from cricke, Middle Dutch for "stick."

Definitions of cricket

1. noun

   leaping insect; male makes chirping noises by rubbing the forewings together
   types:

   mole cricket

   digs in moist soil and feeds on plant roots

   Acheta domestica, European house cricket

   lives in human dwellings; naturalized in parts of America

   Acheta assimilis, field cricket

   common American black cricket; attacks crops and also enters dwellings

   tree cricket

   pale arboreal American cricket noted for loud stridulation

   Oecanthus fultoni, snowy tree cricket

   pale yellowish tree cricket widely distributed in North America

   type of:

   orthopteran, orthopteron, orthopterous insect

   any of various insects having leathery forewings and membranous hind wings and chewing mouthparts
2. noun

   a game played with a ball and bat by two teams of 11 players; teams take turns trying to score runs
   type of:

   field game

   an outdoor game played on a field of specified dimensions
3. verb

   play cricket
   type of:

   play

   participate in games or sport