Formicicide

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The killing of ants.

I start­ed won­der­ing if this word exist­ed as I was using my vac­u­um clean­er as a means of dis­pens­ing with a pro­ces­sion of the six-legged pests cross­ing my kitchen floor. They seem to real­ly like my garbage. I know the vac­u­um clean­er won’t get rid of them, but it makes me feel bet­ter. I remem­bered that ants secrete formic acid, so it was pret­ty easy to browse through the «form-» entries in the dic­tio­nary. My first guess was «formi­cide» but the Dash­board Dic­tio­nary Wid­get says «formi­ci­cide.»

Published by splicer

One Reply to “Formicicide”

  1. I like “formi­cate” and
    I like “formi­cate” and “formi­ca­tion” because you can use them in pub­lic and every­body thinks you are talk­ing dirty. Sort of like call­ing a girl a thes­pi­an. Formi­cate is “crawl­ing on the ground like an ant” and formi­ca­tion is the sen­sa­tion that ants are crawl­ing on you when they are not.

    Dad