mosquitoyoudaoicibaDictYouDict[mosquito 词源字典]
mosquito: [16] 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 [19] – 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 [16].)
=> midge, midget, musket[mosquito etymology, mosquito origin, 英语词源]
mesquite (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
type of North American shrub of the pea family, 1759, from Mexican Spanish mezquite, from Nahuatl (Aztecan) mizquitl "mesquite."
mosquito (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
1580s, from Spanish mosquito "little gnat," diminutive of mosca "fly," from Latin musca "fly," from PIE root *mu- "gnat, fly," imitative of insect buzzing (compare Sanskrit maksa-, Greek myia, Old English mycg, Modern English midge, Old Church Slavonic mucha), perhaps imitative of the sound of humming insects.