pinch-bug U.S.
A stag-beetle belonging to the family Lucanidæ.
| 1856 ‘Mark Twain’ Let. 25 May in Iowa Jrnl. Hist. (1929) XXVII. 423 A tenor and bass duet by thirty-two thousand locusts and ninety-seven thousand pinch-bugs was sung. 1870 E. Eggleston Bk. Queer Stories ix. 74 We came to a log on which two of that sort of beetles that children call ‘pinch-bugs’, were fighting. 1876 ‘Mark Twain’ Tom Sawyer v. 47 It was a large black beetle with formidable jaws—a ‘pinch-bug’ he called it. 1915 W. A. Bryan Nat. Hist. Hawaii xxxi. 417 The stag-beetles or pinch bugs, so called on account of their large mandibles. 1959 A. B. & E. B. Klots Living Insects of World 132/2 There is little doubt that the ‘pinch bug’ Tom Sawyer took to church was a stag beetle. |