bug

1. 1.

   annoy persistently

   “The children teased the boy because of his stammer”

   Synonymsteasebadgerpesterbeleaguer

   Broadertorment
2. 2.

   tap a telephone or telegraph wire to get information

   “The FBI was tapping the phone line of the suspected spy”

   “Is this hotel room bugged?”

   Synonymswiretaptapintercept

   Broaderlisten in

Other forms of bug

plural

bugs·

past tense or participle

bugged

present participle

bugging

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about bug

What does bug mean?

bug means "general term for any insect or similar creeping or crawling invertebrate". That is the primary sense; the word has 7 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in bug?

bug has 1 syllable: bug. In IPA it is /ˈbʌɡ/.

What is another word for bug?

Close synonyms include glitch, hemipterous insect, hemipteran, hemipteron, microbe. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is bug a common word?

bug is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with bug?

5 words rhyme with bug. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.