Bug
Bug names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Bug a large sub-order of insects
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a large sub-order of insects. The term is too often applied to beetles as well. The wing covers of a beetle are horny throughout, and meet in a straight line on the back like edges of a clam shell. The front wings of a bug are hard and horny only part way. The tips are thin or gauzy and overlap when folded. The wings of flies are gauzy throughout. Potato bugs, June bugs, rose bugs, and lady bugs are all beetles. The chinch bug, the squash bug, and the cotton-stainer are true bugs. The bedbug is rightly named. Like other insects, bugs breathe by tubes situated in the sides of the abdomen. The water boatmen that dive like silver bubbles carry air surrounding their bodies. The back-swimmers that float around on their backs carry down a supply of air under their wings. The longlegged, slender, water-striders that dart around each other on the surface of a quiet pool are also bugs. Toad-shaped bugs, shore bugs, assassin bugs, ambush bugs, flat bugs, leaf bugs, red bugs, stilt bugs, stink bugs, lace bugs, and negro bugs are all too numerous for description, and must be studied with a textbook like Comstock's Manual. The electric light bug is the largest bug known in America. See Bedbug ; Chinch Bug ; Beetle
Bug the English name of the suborder h heteroptera
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the English name of the suborder h heteroptera, one of two ranked under the order hemiptera or rhyncota. Most of the species essentially resemble the bed-bug, except that they have wings. Some suck the blood , of animals and others subsist on vegetable juices. Not a few species are beautiful, but many have the same unpleasant smell which emanates from the bed-bug. The unattractive form and manner of life of the bed-bug are too well known to require description. The eggs, which are white, are deposited in the beginning of summer. They are glued to the crevices of bedsteads or furniture, or to the walls of rooms. Before houses existed, the bug probably lived under the bark of trees.
Bug the name of two Russian rivers
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the name of two Russian rivers. The western Bug rises in the Republic of Ukraine, near Lemberg, and after a course of about 470 miles, forming, for the most way, the E. frontier of Poland, it joins the Vistula, near Warsaw. The eastern Bug, the Hypanis of the ancients, rises in Podolia, Republic of Ukraine, and flows 520 miles S. E. into the estuary of the Dnieper. They both played an important part during the World War, and their banks and the adjoining regions saw much and very heavy fighting.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 distinction still holds: the true bugs are the Heteroptera, and potato, June, rose and lady "bugs" are indeed beetles, though Heteroptera is now usually ranked within Hemiptera alongside the cicadas and aphids rather than paired with a single sister suborder. Collier's called the bed-bug "too well known to require description" in 1921; it had nearly vanished from Western homes by the 1950s under DDT, then returned worldwide from the 1990s on the back of pyrethroid resistance and cheap air travel. The sense that now dominates the word is Aiton's-era slang for a mechanical fault — Edison used it in the 1870s — made famous by the moth taped into the Harvard Mark II logbook in 1947. As for the rivers, Lemberg is Lviv, the Western Bug is now the Poland–Ukraine and Poland–Belarus border, and the Southern Bug, wholly Ukrainian, again saw heavy fighting near Mykolaiv after February 2022.
Written for this edition, 2026.