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''locust'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260331180822-00-⌔

locust - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

locust (plural locusts)

  • Any of the grasshoppers, often polyphenic and usually swarming, in the family Acrididae that are very destructive to crops and other vegetation, especially migratory locusts (Locusta migratoria). [from 14th c.]
  • (now historical) A fruit or pod of a carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua). [from 16th c.]
    • ✤ Among other articles, they brought with them a great quantity of locusts, which are a kind of pulse, sweet and pleasant to the palate, and in shape resembling French beans, but longer.1
  • Any of various often leguminous trees and shrubs, especially of the genera Robinia and Gleditsia; locust tree. [from 17th c.]
  • A cicada. [from 18th c.]
  • (Hong Kong, derogatory, offensive, ethnic slur) A mainlander.
  • (UK, slang, obsolete) A dose of laudanum.
    • ✤ I took my flogging like a stone. If I had sung, some of the convicts would have given me some lush with a locust in it (laudanum hocussing), and when I was asleep would have given me a crack on the head that would have laid me straight.2

Verb

locust (third-person singular simple present locusts, present participle locusting, simple past and past participle locusted)

  • (intransitive) To come in a swarm.
    • ✤ This Philip and the black-faced swarms of Spain,
      The hardest, cruellest people in the world,
      Come locusting upon us, eat us up,
      Confiscate lands, goods, money […]      3

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English locuste, locust, from Anglo-Norman locuste, Middle French locuste, and their source, Latin locustam (“locust, crustacean, lobster”, accusative of locusta).4 Doublet of langouste.

Noun sense 3 (“kind of tree”), originally referring to the carob (compare locust bean), is based on the resemblance of the trees’ beanlike seed pods to the insect and is likely a semantic loan from Ancient Greek ἀκρίς (akrís).5

Noun sense 5 (“mainlander”) is a semantic loan from Cantonese 蝗蟲/蝗虫 (wong4 cung4), also meaning “locust”.

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA: /ˈləʊ.kəst/
  • (US) IPA: /ˈloʊ.kəst/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -əʊkəst, -oʊkəst

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1789, Olaudah Equiano, chapter 9, in The Interesting Narrative, volume I: ↩

  2. 1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, published 1861: ↩

  3. 1875, Alfred Tennyson, Queen Mary: A Drama, London: Henry S. King & Co., →OCLC,: ↩

  4. “locust”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000. ↩

  5. Douglas Harper (2001–2023), “locust (n.2)”, in Online Etymology Dictionary ↩

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