- 1白蟻。台灣潮濕，木造家具、木門框、房屋樑柱被白蟻蛀的情況很常見，一般都說「蛀掉了」「有白蟻」。
A small pale insect that lives in huge colonies and eats wood. Termites are famous for what they do to houses: they tunnel through beams, door frames, and furniture from the inside, so the wood can look perfectly fine on the surface while it is hollow underneath. That is why people talk about termites with a kind of dread — you usually discover them after the damage is done.
They live in a colony with a queen, and in hot places they build tall hard earth mounds that can be taller than a person. In English people often call them 'white ants' because they look like pale ants, but they are not ants at all — they are more closely related to . Scientists mind about this; ordinary speakers don't.
The word is a normal countable noun: one termite, a lot of termites. You will meet it most often in the phrases 'termite damage', 'a termite problem', and 'termite inspection' — in America, having a house checked for termites before you buy it is a routine and rather serious step.
People sometimes use it as a picture for something quiet that eats away at a thing from inside: 'corruption works like termites'. That is a figure of speech, not a separate meaning, but you will see it.
組成來自拉丁文 termes（「蛀木蟲」）。有趣的是，英文先借進來的是複數形 termites（拉丁文 termitēs），後來的人以為 termites 是英文的複數，就反推出一個單數 termite——語言學上叫「逆構詞」(back-formation)。林奈在分類時把 termes 用來指白蟻，這個用法就固定下來了。
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，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。
termitenoun/ˈtɜː(ɹ).maɪt/
- 1
A white-bodied, wood-consuming insect of the infraorder Isoptera, in the order Blattodea.
- Linnæus describes this insect under the Latin name of Termes; and citizen Cuvier speaks of it under that of Termites. The vulgar call it by that of white ant, or fourmi vaguevague. The termites divide themselves into societies: each society builds itself a next, and each nest belongs to an innumerable quantity of these insects, who acknowledge for their chiefs a king and a queen.
- 2
A contemptible person.
- This two faced termite has the nerve to talk.
termiteverb/ˈtɜː(ɹ).maɪt/
- 1
Of a chimpanzee: to catch termites by inserting a stick or vine into their nest and waiting for them to climb up it.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。