bug
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: bŭg
ipa: /bʌɡ/
rhymes: -ʌɡ
Forms: form: bugs
form: bugg
Etymology: First attested in this form around 1620 (referring to a “bedbug”), from earlier bugge (“beetle”), from Middle English bugge (“scarecrow, hobgoblin”) which is traced alternatively to:
* a Celtic root found in Scots bogill (“goblin, bugbear”) and obsolete Welsh bwg (“ghost, hobgoblin”); compare Welsh bwgwl (“threat, fear”) and Middle Irish bocanách (“supernatural being”).
* Proto-Germanic *bugja- (“swollen up, thick”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-, *bu- (“to swell”); compare Norwegian bugge (“big man”), dialectal Low German Bögge (“goblin, snot”).
* or to a word related to buck and originally referring to a goat-shaped spectre.
For the “insect” meaning the assonance with Middle English budde (“beetle”), from Old English budda, from Proto-Germanic *buddô, *buzdô, from the same ultimate source as above, might have played a role. Compare Low German Budde (“louse, grub”), Norwegian budda (“newborn domestic animal”). More at bud. But ultimately this convergence of meaning doesn't prove a conflation of the two terms, they might have existed in parallel since PIE times with similar meanings, even if unnoticed by literary sources.
The term is used to refer to technical errors and problems at least as early as the 19th century, predating the commonly known story of a moth being caught in a computer.
Senses: topics: biology
entomology
natural-sciences
glosses: An insect of the order Hemiptera (the “true bugs”).
examples: text: Bugs, oysters, prawns and crabs […] are plated up on the decks of four side-by-side trawlers bobbing on the calm waters of Trinity Inlet.
ref: 2021 February 23, The Road Ahead, Brisbane, page 39, column 2:
glosses: Any of various species of marine or freshwater crustaceans; e.g. a Moreton Bay bug, mudbug.
examples: text: These flies are a bother. I’ll get some bug spray and kill them.
glosses: Any insect, arachnid, or other terrestrial arthropod that is a pest.
glosses: Any minibeast.
glosses: Any insect, arachnid, myriapod or entognath.
examples: text: Speaking of advertising changes of name, a title by which those lodging-house pests, bugs, are now often known, that of Norfolk Howards, is derived from an advertisement in which one Ephraim Bug avowed his intention of being for the future known as Norfolk Howard.
ref: 1874, Henry Sampson, A history of advertising, page 278:
text: Bugs are generated from the moisture of living animals, as it dries up outside their bodies. Lice are generated out of the flesh of animals.
ref: 1910, Aristotle, translated by D.W. Thompson, The Works of Aristotle: Historia animalium:
glosses: A bedbug.
examples: text: The software bug led the computer to calculate 2 plus 2 as 3.
text: I have the right principle and am on the right track, but time, hard work and some good luck are necessary too. It has been just so in all of my inventions. The first step is an intuition, and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise — this thing gives out and [it is] then that "Bugs" — as such little faults and difficulties are called — show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached.
ref: 1878, Thomas P. Hughes, quoting Thomas Edison, Edison to Puskas, 13 November 1878, Edison papers, quoted in American Genesis: A History of the American Genius for Invention, Edison National Laboratory, U.S. National Park Service, West Orange, N.J.: Penguin Books, published 1989, →ISBN, page 75:
text: A... leading aluminum producer claims it has worked all the bugs out of building and servicing aluminum radiators, says it hopes to have a large chunk of the radiator market by the early nineteen seventies.
ref: 1968 April 23, Popular Mechanics:
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
synonyms: defect
glitch
glosses: A problem that needs fixing.
examples: text: He's got the flu bug.
glosses: A contagious illness, or a pathogen causing it.
examples: text: I caught the skiing bug while staying in the Alps.
text: As we rode in the bus in the weird phosphorescent void of the Lincoln Tunnel we leaned on each other with fingers waving and yelled and talked excitedly, and I was beginning to get the bug like Dean.
ref: 1957, Jack Kerouac, chapter 1, in On the Road, Viking Press, →OCLC, part 1:
glosses: An enthusiasm for something; an obsession.
examples: text: His mother had been a bug on astrology, which was why the moment of his birth had been impressed on him so exactly.
ref: 1961, Fredric Brown, Nightmare in Yellow:
text: Incidentally, the camera manufacturers have had a new worry—that they might "kill off the hobby," as U.S. Camera magazine put it recently—by automating to the point that real camera bugs would feel no challenge.
ref: 1961, Kiplinger's Personal Finance, volume 15, number 12, page 34:
glosses: A keen enthusiast or hobbyist.
examples: text: We installed a bug in her telephone.
glosses: A concealed electronic eavesdropping or intercept device.
examples: text: He suspected the image was a Web bug used for determining who was visiting the site.
glosses: A small and usually invisible file (traditionally a single-pixel image) on a World Wide Web page, primarily used to track users.
glosses: A lobster.
examples: text: Channel 4's bug distracted Jim from his favorite show.
text: The score bug displays the current football score over the ongoing match.
topics: broadcasting
media
television
glosses: A small, usually transparent or translucent image placed in a corner of a television program to identify the broadcasting network or cable channel.
examples: text: You look up the proper speed for the phase of flight, set the reminder bug, and then literally forget the speed. You don't read the airspeed number, you fly to the bug.
ref: 2004, Flying Magazine, volume 131, number 10, page 10:
topics: aeronautics
aerospace
aviation
business
engineering
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
glosses: A manually positioned marker in flight instruments.
examples: text: At this point your telegraph operator, sitting at your right, goes "Ticky-tick-tickety-de-tick-tick," with his bug, as he calls his transmitter, and looks at you expectantly.
ref: 1938, Paul Gallico, Farewell to Sport, page 257:
text: As far as the dashes are concerned, the bug is the same in operation as any regular key would be if it were turned up on edge instead of sitting flat on the desk.
ref: 1942, Arthur Reinhold Nilson, Radio Code Manual, page 134:
text: I was a very good radio operator. I bought my own bug. That's what the telegraph key in its modern form was called. It was semiautomatic.
ref: 1986, E. L. Doctorow, World's Fair, page 282:
glosses: A semi-automated telegraph key.
examples: text: Sir, spare your threats: / The bug which you would fright me with I seek.
ref: c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:
synonyms: bog
bogey
bogle
boggle
boggard
bugbear
glosses: Hobgoblin, scarecrow; anything that terrifies.
examples: text: The arguably most debated bareback practice that came to attract attention early on (and still does) was that of "bug chasing," in which HIV-negative men (bug chasers) actively seek out sex with HIV-positive men (gift givers).
ref: 2019, Tora Holmberg, Annika Jonsson, Fredrik Palm, Death Matters: Cultural Sociology of Mortal Life, Springer, →ISBN, page 130:
qualifier: chiefly LGBTQ; "the bug"; chiefly LGBTQ; "the bug"
glosses: HIV.
topics: card-games
poker
glosses: A limited form of wild card in some variants of poker.
examples: text: We asked Harris if he had any recommendations about seeing the famous trilobite digs. He said we should just drive out to his claim in the Wheeler Quadrangle, and it was just fine with him if we dug a few bugs.
ref: 2007, Kirk Johnson, Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway, page 174:
topics: biology
history
human-sciences
natural-sciences
paleontology
sciences
glosses: A trilobite.
examples: text: Now, only three years later, most of the major oil companies maintain staffs of these men who examine cores, classify the various types of "bugs," or foraminifera, and make charts showing the depths at which each of the hundreds of types is found.
ref: July 1933, Popular Science
qualifier: oil industry
glosses: Synonym of oil bug.
synonyms: word: oil bug
examples: text: The "bugs" are the asterisks next to the apprentice's name. One bug is a five-pound allowance, two bugs equal seven pounds, and three bugs equal ten pounds.
ref: 1999, Anita Scialli, Inside Track 1999, page 62:
topics: hobbies
horse-racing
horseracing
horses
lifestyle
pets
racing
sports
glosses: An asterisk denoting an apprentice jockey's weight allowance.
topics: hobbies
horse-racing
horseracing
horses
lifestyle
pets
racing
sports
synonyms: bug boy
glosses: A young apprentice jockey.
topics: media
printing
publishing
glosses: Synonym of union bug.
synonyms: word: union bug
examples: text: Because many illegal slot-machine operators here and abroad do not like to give the slot-machine player even one chance to hit the jackpot or the big bonus, they make use of a "bug." This is a small, flat half-circle of iron about an inch long, which looks something like a bug.
ref: 1961, John Scarne, Complete Guide to Gambling, page 394:
topics: gambling
games
glosses: A small piece of metal used in a slot machine to block certain winning combinations.
examples: text: Some clumsy or audacious sharpers will go so far as to hold out cards in their lap, or stick them in a "bug" under the table.
ref: 1897, Robert Frederick Foster, Foster's Complete Hoyle, page 195:
text: Fargo had been in a saloon in Kansas when a man was caught using a bug. Made of steel and shaped like a money clip with two sharp ends, the bug was jammed under a table and held cards the bug's owner palmed until they were needed.
ref: 2006, Jon Sharpe, The Trailsman #299: Dakota Danger:
topics: gambling
games
glosses: A metal clip attached to the underside of a table, etc. to hold hidden cards, as a form of cheating.
Derived terms: ambush bug
antibug
arithmetic bug
armadillo bug
ash-gray leaf bug
assassin bug
Australian bug
bagrada bug
bait bug
Balmain bug
bat bug
beard bug
bedbug
beetle bug
Bess bug
Betsey bug
Betsy bug
bitten by the same bug
boat bug
bohrbug
bow bug
broad-headed bug
brown marmorated stink bug
buffalo bug
bug-a-boo
bugbane
bug-bear
bug bomb
bug-chaser
bug-chasing
bug check
bugdom
bug eye
bug-eyed
bug-eyed monster
bug eyes
bugfix
bugfree
bugfucker
buggable
buggee
bugger
buggish
bug hotel
bughouse
bug-hunter
bugicide
bug in one's bonnet
bug juice
bugkind
bugless
buglet
buglike
bugmail
bug-man
bugman
bug nation
bugnuts
bug off
bugology
bug-on-a-stick
bug-out
bug-out bag
bugproof
bug-ridden
bug screen
bug scrub
bug shoe
bugsome
bug spray
bug storm
Bugthesda
bug up one's ass
bug-walk
bugwood
bug-word
bugwort
bug zapper
burrowing bug
China bug
cocaine bugs
conchuela bug
conenose bug
crank bug
crazier than a June bug
crazy as a cootie bug
creeping water bug
Croton bug
cuddle bug
cute as a bug in a rug
damsel bug
dead-bug
debug
doodlebug
dorbug
double-headed bug
dustbug
ebony bug
electric light bug
enbugging
feather-legged bug
firebug
flat bug
flower bug
giant water bug
ginger bug
given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow
gnat bug
gold bug
golden egg bug
grass assassin bug
greenbug
greenhouse bug
green vegetable bug
harlequin bug
harlequin cabbage bug
harmonica bug
harvest bug
heisenbug
Hindenbug
hoard-bug
honeybug
hornbug
Jesus bug
jewel bug
jitterbug
June bug
kissing bug
kudzu bug
lace bug
ladybug
leaf-footed bug
lightning bug
like a chicken on a June bug
litterbug
look like one swallowed a bug
lovebug
lygus bug
mandelbug
May bug
mealybug
milkweed bug
millennium bug
minute pirate bug
mirid bug
Morton Bay bug
moss bug
negro bug
new bug
North American wheel bug
off-by-one bug
oil bug
painted bug
palmetto bug
parent bug
picnic bug
pill bug
pinacate bug
pirate bug
plant bug
potato bug
pram bug
predator bug
pumpkin bug
put a bug in someone's ear
redbug
red pumpkin bug
riffle bug
river bug
rose bug
Rutherglen bug
salve bug
sand bug
scarebug
schroedinbug
score bug
scorpion bug
sea bug
seed bug
shield-backed bug
shield bug
shoot bug
shore bug
shutterbug
slugabug
slug bug
snug as a bug in a rug
snugglebug
southern green stink bug
sow bug
spitbug
spittlebug
squash bug
stick bug
stilt bug
stinkbug
stomach bug
striped shield bug
superbug
sycamore lace bug
tarnished plant bug
termite bug
thread bug
thread-legged bug
thunderbug
toad bug
travel bug
true bug
tumblebug
union bug
unique-headed bug
vampire bug
variegated coffee bug
velvet water bug
water bug
web bug
wekiu bug
welding bug
welwitschia bug
wheat bug
wheel bug
wood bug
wug
Y10K bug
Y2K bug