white ant

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Related to white ant: termite

white ant

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

white ant

(Animals) another name for termite

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

ter•mite

(ˈtɜr maɪt)

n.

any of numerous pale-colored, soft-bodied, chiefly tropical, social insects of the order Isoptera that feed on wood, some being highly destructive to buildings, furniture, etc. Also called white ant.

[1775–85; taken as singular of New Latin termites, pl. of termes white ant, Latin tarmes wood-eating worm]

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Noun

white ant - whitish soft-bodied ant-like social insect that feeds on wood

termite

insect - small air-breathing arthropod

Isoptera, order Isoptera - order of social insects that live in colonies, including: termites; often placed in subclass Exopterygota

dry-wood termite - any of various termites that live in and feed on dry wood that is not connected with the soil

Reticulitermes flanipes - destructive United States termite

Reticulitermes lucifugus - destructive European termite

Mastotermes darwiniensis - Australian termite; sole living species of Mastotermes; called a living fossil; apparent missing link between cockroaches and termites

Mastotermes electromexicus - an extinct termite found in amber in southern Mexico

Mastotermes electrodominicus - extinct termite found in amber in the Dominican Republic

Translations

formica bianca

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There were white ants that ate the wooden poles, and wild elephants that pulled up the iron poles.

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It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants; a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land.

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Several battalions of soldiers, in their shirt sleeves despite the cold wind, swarmed in these earthworks like a host of white ants; spadefuls of red clay were continually being thrown up from behind the bank by unseen hands.

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"And that's Queenie Colquhoun," she went on, turning the pages, "who took her coffin out with her to Jamaica, packed with lovely shawls and bonnets, because you couldn't get coffins in Jamaica, and she had a horror of dying there (as she did), and being devoured by the white ants. And there's Sabine, the loveliest of them all; ah!

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"Habit el-Asefa", "Al-Lesan al-Mor" (The bitter tongue), "Ibtesama Ghair Mafhoma" (A Misunderstood smile), "Al-Naml al-Abyad" (white ant) were his most popular writings.

Veteran novelist Abdel Wahab al-Aswany passes away on Jan. 3

This tree yields perhaps the most useful of Australian timbers in the interior, being white ant proof, but, unfortunately, is generally of small size, rarely exceeding 15 to 18 inches in diameter at the base, and as the trunk tapers rapidly, it consequently takes a large number of trees to furnish sufficient timber for a moderate-sized building.

A plea for the Murray Pine

Even National Geographic gives The Soul of the White Ant a commendatory mention in Glenn D.

Soul-brother Eugene N. Marais: some notes towards a re-edit of his works

Due to the less rains in the Barani areas the attack of pests/insects like white ant and termite on the crops have also increased, he remarked.

Less rains during October-December to affect wheat, grams: Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC)

Rather they have built the society of the White Ant.

A little light reading and some cataclysm

Eugene Marais, who inspired Materlinck, wrote in Afrikaans 6 years before the Belgian poet a book with a title in the English translation, "The Soul of the White Ant." Maeterlinck talked about the spirit of the hive, of the ant nest, of the termite mound, but I think it was Wheeler who created the concept of the superorganism.

Holldobler, B., and Wilson, E. O. 2008. The Superorganisms. The Beauty, Elegance and Strangeness of Insect Societies

The Soul of the White Ant by Eugene Marais (out of print)

Top 10 writer's reads

Albert Constantine Jr., in Know Your Woods, says greenheart rates a "close second to teak in resisting the white ant. Occasionally worms may attack the sapwood, but they do not penetrate into the heartwood."