wasp

/wɑsp/

/wɑsp/

Other forms: wasps

Wasps are flying insects related to bees and ants. While some wasps can inflict painful stings, if you don't disturb their nest and avoid stepping on or swatting them, you're unlikely to be stung.

Yellow jackets and hornets are types of wasps. Like their bee relatives, wasps are important pollinators. They also help control bug populations by feeding smaller bugs (including pests like aphids) to their young. Because wasp stings can hurt a lot, many people fear wasps. But most wasp species do not have stingers that can pierce a person's skin, and only females have stingers at all. Unless you bother them, these buzzing insects will leave you alone. Wasp is related to the Latin word for wasp, vespa.

Definitions of wasp

1. noun

   social or solitary hymenopterans typically having a slender body with the abdomen attached by a narrow stalk and having a formidable sting
   types:

   vespid, vespid wasp

   mostly social nest-building wasps

   velvet ant

   a solitary wasp of the family Mutillidae; the body has a coat of brightly colored velvety hair and the females are wingless

   sphecoid, sphecoid wasp

   any of various solitary wasps

   cynipid gall wasp, cynipid wasp, gall wasp, gallfly

   small solitary wasp that produces galls on oaks and other plants

   paper wasp

   any of several social wasps that construct nests of a substance like paper

   hornet

   a large flying insect with a painful sting

   Vespula vulgaris, common wasp

   a variety of vespid wasp

   mason wasp

   any of various solitary wasps that construct nests of hardened mud for their young

   potter wasp

   any of various solitary wasps that construct vase-shaped cells of mud for their eggs

   mason wasp

   solitary wasp that constructs nests of hardened mud or clay for the young

   digger wasp

   solitary wasp that digs nests in the soil and stocks them with paralyzed insects for the larvae

   mud dauber

   wasp that constructs mud cells on a solid base in which females place eggs laid in paralyzed insect larvae

   type of:

   hymenopter, hymenopteran, hymenopteron, hymenopterous insect

   insects having two pairs of membranous wings and an ovipositor specialized for stinging or piercing