Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
noun
An imaginary creature resembling a bird, used in the Wug Test to investigate the acquisition of the plural form in English-speaking children.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Topics: human-sciences, linguistics, sciences
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
In folk taxonomy, a creature with worm or insect features; colloquially, a bug or creepy-crawly.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Topics: anthropology, human-sciences, sciences
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
History
Pseudoword, coined ex nihilo by American psycholinguist Jean Berko Gleason in the 1950s as a word that children taking the test would not have heard before.
Blend of worm + bug.
