- 1
An insectivore is a creature that eats insects as food. A frog that lives on flies is an insectivore. An is a famous one. Many bats, shrews, and some birds are insectivores too. Though actually, scientists have used this word in a tidier way than ordinary people. In everyday talk we just say it eats insects. In older biology books, Insectivore also named a group of small — shrews, moles, hedgehogs. Later science split that group up, so old books and new books do not always mean the same animals. For a , the safe meaning is simply: an animal that eats insects. It is a school and nature-show word, not a dinner-table word.
食蟲動物
組成insect + -i- (a linking sound) + -vore (“eater”). From French insectivore; in the animal-science sense, William Whewell brought it into English in 1840 from Cuvier’s French word, itself from scientific New Latin.
同家族的字
- insectthe first piece: what it eats
- insectivorousthe describing form
- carnivoresame -vore “eater” piece: a meat-eater
- herbivoresame -vore piece: a plant-eater
- omnivoresame -vore piece: an eater of both plants and meat
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
insectivorenoun/ɪnˈsɛktəˌvɔː/
- 1
Insect-eating animal or plant.
- An anteater is an insectivore with a long sticky tongue to catch its prey.
- 2
datedbiologynatural-scienceszoologymammal of the now abandoned order Insectivora.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。