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Mosquito comes ultimately from the Latin word for 'fly', musca (this went back to an Indo-European base *mu-, probably imitative of the sound of humming, which also produced English midge (OE), and hence its derivative midget(19th c.) -- originally a 'tiny sand-fly'). Musca became Spanish mosca, whose diminutive form reached English as mosquito -- etymologically a 'small fly'. (The Italian descendant of musca, incidentally, is also mosca, and its diminutive, moschetto, was applied with black humour to the 'bolt of a crossbow'. From it English gets musket (16th c.).).See also midge, midget, musket

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14y ago

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