A hypernym for 'insects', 'worms' and the like

Question

From Oxford:

insect:

any small creature with six legs and a body divided into three parts. Insects usually also have wings. Ants, bees and flies are all insects

Insect is often used to refer to other small creatures, for example spiders, although this is not correct scientific language.

worm:

1. a long thin creature with no bones or legs, that lives in soil

2. long thin creatures that live inside the bodies of humans or animals and can cause illness

3. the young form of an insect when it looks like a short worm

I find both these definitions oddly restrictive. Insects have 6 legs and worms (in the primary sense) have none. The other senses of worm are also specific. There are many small creatures who do not fall into these categories. Centipedes definity have legs, and a lot more than six. Is there a common (not too scientific) word to refer to all small creatures?

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A bug doesn't work, as is defined as

chiefly North American A small insect:

a thick green scum which crawls with bugs, centipedes, and worse

Insect, not creature, not worm. Also note the exclusion of centipedes from the umbrella of bugs. In fact, Oxford defines centipedes exclusively in scientific terms.

A predatory myriapod invertebrate with a flattened elongated body composed of many segments. Most segments bear a single pair of legs, the front pair being modified as poison fangs.

Although Oxford here lists an informal sense of insect:

informal Any small invertebrate animal such as a spider or tick.

It curiously drops this definition in the advanced learners' version. Moreover, it's reluctant to use the term in its own definition of spider:

An eight-legged predatory arachnid with an unsegmented body consisting of a fused head and thorax and a rounded abdomen. Spiders have fangs which inject poison into their prey, and most kinds spin webs in which to capture insects.

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Questions:

• Is there any word, preferably not too informal, which would include all small creatures like insects, worms, spiders and centipedes; without having to resort to biological jargon?

• Also, how right/wrong is it to use insect or bug for this purpose?

Answer 1

Small children are easily interested in small creatures and, unsurprisingly, primary schools in Britain find the study of such animals a good starting point for much of the curriculum. However, it is was thought that calling them "creepy-crawlies" would risk alienating pupils and trigger the fear and distaste which was common in their grandparents' day.

So the term for these small creatures most often used in British Primary Education is minibeasts For a general view of UK minibeast history see this wikipedia article.

"Minibeast" or "Minibeasts" is a term for a variety of arthropods and other invertebrates, including spiders, ants, butterflies, bees, wasps, flies, woodlice 1, and many others.

Answer 2

Creepy-crawlies.

informal
A spider, worm, or other small flightless creature, especially when considered unpleasant or frightening:

^ Covers all three cases.

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Also, despite your dictionary defining "bug" as an insect specifically, i wouldn't balk at using it to describe worms or spiders as well.

Answer 3

Bug is certainly what I would use, and what I would expect those around me to use. And I am American, so I think Oxford is simply wrong about how we use the word. Merriam-Webster, for instance, gives the principal definition of bug as

1 a : an insect or other creeping or crawling invertebrate (as a spider or centipede)

This matches your desired usage perfectly. Note the near-reference to Scimonster’s suggestion of creepy-crawlies – Merriam-Webster here makes it pretty clear that bug is used as a more-formal creepy-crawly.

That said, if we are being truly formal (read: technical), the third definition is the “formal” one:

1 c : any of an order (Hemiptera and especially its suborder Heteroptera) of insects that have sucking mouthparts, forewings thickened at the base, and incomplete metamorphosis and are often economic pests —called also true bug

This fact is, however, outside entomology, not widely known, and would be regarded by most as trivia. By comparison, the specifics of insect are much more widely known, though I’d guess the majority of speakers are unlikely to care very much in practice – just because someone knows, or at least at one point learned, that insects have three body parts, six legs, etc., doesn’t mean they care to use the word so exactly. But many more know/care about insect’s specific definition than do about bug, as indicated by the fact that some entomologists have resorted to the phrase true bug for Heteroptera. Thus bug is very much my recommendation.

Answer 4

If you're looking for a negative sense, you might use "vermin" -- small, swarming, repulsive, potentially-disease-bearing creatures.

It's a very unscientific term, including rats, frogs, toads, centipedes, and millipedes, as well as insects and most types of worms (except earthworms and redworms, which are good for the soil). Depending on your sensibilities, it might also include mice, spiders, ants, and termites; it might even encompass scorpions and lizards, and maybe even lobsters.

Answer 5

preferably not too informal

This is the most formal one: they are all invertebrates.

Invertebrates are animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column, derived from the notochord. This includes all animals apart from the subphylum Vertebrata. Familiar examples of invertebrates include insects, crabs, lobsters and their kin, snails, clams, octopuses and their kin, starfish, sea-urchins and their kin, and worms.

But the usage depends on the context.

If your text is somehow related to science, don't call spider an "insect". Spiders & insects are "arthropods" (not "arthropodes"), together with worms they are "invertebrates".

Answer 6

"Vermin" or "pests" can be any small creature, usually with a negative connotation, but including things as large as rats or even opossums. "Creepy-crawlies" is good but very informal. But as for "bug" -- scientifically, only a small subset of insects are bugs. But the word has expanded, and can now also mean an infection, or a computer glitch. I would argue that as long as the context doesn't imply you mean only insects, "bug" isn't actually wrong in informal English.

(Scientifically, both worms and insects are invertebrates -- creatures without an internal spine -- which then includes spiders and even coral.)

Answer 7

Minibeast - this term is commonly used (at least in the UK) by charities and other groups which involve children in outdoor activities learning about nature. See also Cbeebies Minibeasts with Jess

The UK organisation Buglife works to protect ALL invertebrates regardless of size or number of legs, and uses the term bug to encompass all of these.

Invertebrates are animals without backbones and make up the great majority of animal life, with 40,000 species in Britain alone and many millions on Earth.

Answer 8

I would say that in the Swedish language the word "kryp" have this meaning. Small creatures that is not built like us mammals, birds and fish. Non vegetable things that move around, but do not have a skeleton. (Or we just can't tell.)

A direct translation to English would be "crawl". But "crawlers" would perhaps correspond more closely to how it is perceived. Yes, it comes from the verb crawl, even if many of them can jump, fly and swim. But it is usually when they crawl on our bodies we notice them.

The word often have a negative association to it, but not necessary.

Answer 9

In french, it is common to see products to kill calling them "indésirables" or "nuisibles".

You can translate to get :

undesirable, unwanted, unwelcome, pest

Answer 10

Wug is a portmanteau of worm and bug. It's not very common though, and might need to be explained.

A Google search for wug worm bug reveals hundreds of results, many from books on taxonomy. I couldn't just search for wug because it has other meanings as well.

This is either very informal or very formal -- i can't quite tell. :P