mealy bug

Questions about mealy bug

What does mealy bug mean?

mealy bug means "scalelike plant-eating insect coated with a powdery waxy secretion; destructive especially of fruit trees".

What is another word for mealy bug?

Close synonyms include mealybug. 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 mealy bug a common word?

mealy bug is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.