n. A small, usually winged and many-legged, invertebrate creature whose body appears to consist of several segments: a term used in popular speech without exactitude, being applied not only to flies, fleas, dragon-flies, butterflies, moths, bees, wasps, crickets, grasshoppers, roaches, beetles, bugs, lice, and other familiar creatures properly called insects, but also, improperly, to other small creatures whose structure and relations are not popularly understood, as the so-called coral insect, which is an actinozoan.n. In zoology, any member of the class or other division of animals called Insecta; an arthropod; a condylopod; an articulated animal with articulated legs, especially one with six such legs; a hexapod. See Insecta and Hexapoda, 1.Of, pertaining to, or of the nature of an insect or insects: as, insect transformations; insect architecture.Like an insect in any respect; small; mean; contemptible.To seek or catch insects, as a bird does.