- any beetle of the family Buprestidae, comprising wood-boring beetles of a metallic luster.
Origin of buprestid
1350–1400; Middle English < New Latin Buprestidae name of the family, equivalent to Latin būprēst(is) venomous beetle (< Greek boúprēstis, literally ox-sweller) + -idae -id2
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for buprestid
Laporte de Castelnau and Gory have described and made drawings of about 1,300 species of Buprestid.
The tribe of weevils is even much more numerous than that of the Elaterid and the Buprestid.
- any beetle of the mainly tropical family Buprestidae, the adults of which are brilliantly coloured and the larvae of which bore into and cause damage to trees, roots, etc
- of, relating to, or belonging to the family Buprestidae
C19: from Latin buprestis poisonous beetle, causing the cattle who eat it to swell up, from Greek, from bous ox + prēthein to swell up
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012