Six Meanings For Bug in English


Want to see more videos from Idioms.Online? Subscribe to our YouTube channel!

In English, a bug is a small insect.

There are not many rules about how we use the word bug in English. Some folks even call spiders bugs. Entomologists are much more specific about the use of the word bug, however, They reserve it for insects of the order called Hemiptera. These are insects like cicadas, aphids, and bed bugs. They can be very small or quite large and they have sucking mouthparts.

Besides the sucking mouthparts, none of that really matters to regular folks. In American English, we usually call an insect
that is crawling around ‘a bug’ but wealso tend to have specific names for some insects, especially flying insects like mosquitos and gnats, orhouse pests like roaches, and ants.

And, in English in general, we wouldn’t tend to call a butterfly a bug, or a dragonfly, for that matter.

The word bug, however, is used in several other ways.

To bug someone:

To bug someone means to bother them or annoy them.

“Stop bugging me!”

“You know, it really bugs me when people cut
you off in traffic.”

This use as an idiom makes sense as a bug will tend to bother most people and some bugs, like gnats and mosquitoes, are quite bothersome.

As a noun, an illness caused by bacteria or a virus is often called a bug:

We especially use this term in reference to a stomach or gastrointestinal ailment, which we call a stomach bug.

“There’s a stomach bug going around.”

A stomach bug going around means a lot of people are getting a virus that causes gastrointestinal symptoms.

In case you don’t know, those are symptoms like stomach pain and bloating; nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.

“My son just got over a bad stomach bug. He was throwing up constantly!”

A bug can also be a problem with a device such as a computer or phone:

A mistake or glitch in any system that may cause it to crash or seize or just not to function properly can be called a bug.

Often, software has to be updated several times to work out the bugs (in other words, to eliminate all the problems).

A bug can also be a small listening device placed to spy on another person…to hear what they are saying from a remote location:

A bug can be hidden on a person or in a place.

It’s also used as a verb.

To place such a listening device in a room is to ‘bug the room,’ for example.

Besides an illness like a stomach bug, you can also get another kind of bug:

If you develop a strong enthusiasm for something or a great desire to participate in it or to be a part of it, we say ‘you’ve got the bug.’

You can also be bitten by the bug:

“Sean was bitten by the guitar bug. He’s been locked in his room practicing for days.”

“Wow, I didn’t know how fun this was going to be!”

“See, I told you you’d get the bug.”

More Vocabulary