cockroach

来自西班牙语cucaracha, 拟声词，模仿甲虫声音。拼写俗化为cock和roach（一种鲤鱼）。

cockroach

cockroach: [17] Cockroach is a product of folk etymology, the process by which a ‘foreign’ – sounding is adapted by speakers of a language so as to seem more familiar. In this case the foreign word was Spanish cucaracha. This was evidently too much for 17th-century English tongues, so the first element was transformed into cock and the second to roach (presumably after the freshwater fish of that name). Modern English roach ‘butt of a marijuana cigarette’ [20] is probably an abbreviation of cockroach, but this is not certain.

cockroach (n.)

1620s, folk etymology (as if from cock + roach) of Spanish cucaracha "chafer, beetle," from cuca "kind of caterpillar." Folk etymology also holds that the first element is from caca "excrement."

A certaine India Bug, called by the Spaniards a Cacarootch, the which creeping into Chests they eat and defile with their ill-sented dung [Capt. John Smith, "Virginia," 1624].

1. She was forced to live in a cockroach - infested house.

她被迫住在一间蟑螂成群的房子里.

2. A species of cockroach sprays a substance , ethylacrolein, that is a kind of tear gas.

某种蟑螂喷射一种催泪性毒气――乙 基丙烯 醛.

3. You must be tough as a cockroach to survive my attack wave.

你这只臭蟑螂还挺强硬顶住了我的冲击波.

4. The Cockroach, is me, changed from the spell of a sorcerer.

蟑螂 ﹐ 也就是“我” ﹐ 被魔法师施了咒语之后才变成蟑螂的.

5. By accident, the Apollo mission brought a cockroach into space.

阿波罗号在执行任务时意外地把一只蟑螂带进了太空.