insectual

From insect +‎ -ual.^[1]

insectual (comparative more insectual, superlative most insectual)

1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of an insect.

   Synonym: insectile

   • 1844 March 31, “Answers to Correspondents”, in The Era, volume VI, number 288, London, page 4, column 2:

     Cochineal is made from an insect. Every pound weight of this valuable drug is said to contain 70,000 insects boiled to death; so that the annual sacrifice of insectual life to procure our scarlet and crimson dyes amounts to about 49,000,000 of these minute members of the vast creation.

   • 1848, James A. Rhodes, “Description of the Navy of Ecuador—Provisional Allowance—Fleas, Cockroaches, &c.—”, in Adventures by the Sea and Land: Being a Cruise in a Whale Boat, during a Year in the Pacific Ocean and the Interior of South America, New York, N.Y.: New-York Publishing Company, , page 63:

     The remembrance of those horrible nights, which were for the most part sleepless, makes us even now shudder, varied only, as they were, by occasional volleys of curses from the men, upon all our persecutors, both human and insectual, if we may coin a word.

   • 1861 May, “Editor’s Table”, in The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, volume LVII, number 5, New York, N.Y.: J. R. Gilmore, , page 571:

     Fussy and ‘pompious’ Tumblety Bug seemed to say with Senator Benton, when he moved the celebrated Jackson ‘Expunging Resolutions:’ ‘Solitary and alone, I set this ball in motion!’ That ‘was so,’ too: but while we pondered upon the object of the humbugeous, insectual laborer, lo! he vanished from our sight, ‘and we saw him no more.’

   • 1912 October, Max Beerbohm, “A Sequelula to ‘The Dynasts’”, in A Christmas Garland Woven by Max Beerbohm, London: William Heinemann, page 61:

     Spirit of the Pities. / Yonder, that swarm of things insectual / Wheeling Nowhither in Particular— / What is it? / Spirit of the Years. / That? Oh that is merely one / Of those innumerous congeries / Of parasites by which, since time began, / Space has been interfested.

   • 2016 spring, Cesar Vallejo, translated by Alvaro Cardona-Hine, “Trilce”, in Malpaís Review, volume 6, number 4, Placitas, N.M., →ISSN, section XLIV, page 41:

     Other times its horns proceed, slow yellow yearnings to live, they go eclipsed, delousing insectual nightmares dead to thunder, herald of genesis.

   • 2017, Christopher Gudgeon, “Still Life with Birds and Dust”, in The Encyclopedia of Lies: Stories, Vancouver, B.C.: Anvil Press, →ISBN, page 190:

     He watches a small bulldozer build uniform piles of dust and sand. There is something insectual about the machine’s efforts, a formician predetermination that Michael finds soothing.

   • 2017, Helen McClory, chapter 42, in Flesh of the Peach, Glasgow: Freight Books, →ISBN, page 102:

     Insects were now awake and playing between the pine branches and the leaf drift. Sarah wished she could live like them, stick herself to a mate, to dance, an ooze of pollen and insectual fluids, then to split apart, deseaming, done.

   • 2017 November, Levi Black [pseudonym; James R. Tuck], chapter 39, in Black Goat Blues, New York, N.Y.: Tor, →ISBN, page 171:

     They are wings, insectual and diaphanous, a wasp, a hornet, a stinging winging thing that can inject venom into you over and over and over again until your bloodstream fills with the stuff and it begins to dissolve your muscles and makes your tendons pull and contract as they stiffen and draw in a rictus that snaps the very bones they are attached to.