terricole

English

Etymology

From Latin terricolus (“ground-dwelling”). Equivalent to Latin terra (“earth”) + -cole.

Adjective

terricole (comparative more terricole, superlative most terricole)

1. Ground-dwelling or growing close to the ground.
   • 1896, Paul Carus, The Monist - Volume 6, page 36:

     Man himself is terricole in habits, with vertical carriage, and walking on two feet.

   • 1916, Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, page 319:

     The plant from Heald Brow is terricole, occurring on loose sandy calcareous earth about the entrances to rabbit-holes, in a very dry locality, Heald Brow being a dry hill on the scar-limestone.

   • 1963, Agra University Journal of Research: Science - Volume 12, page 171:

     The greatest bulk of the typical high altitude insects are generally small-sized, flightless or apterous, mostly heavily pigmented, terricole forms that occur under stoness, in the immediate vicinity of glaciers, snow and melt waters.

   • 2013, M.S. Mani, Ecology and Biogeography of High Altitude Insects, →ISBN, page 66:

     These peculiarities depend largely on the moisture requirements of the terricole species. In humid weather, the top layer of the soil is usually highly saturated and moist, so that the terricole species generally occur on the upper layers of the soil.

Noun

terricole (plural terricoles)

1. Any insect that lives on or in the ground, especially one that is flightless.
   • 1863, Cassell's popular natural history - Volumes 3-4, page 247:

     The Terricoles are the true Crane Flies, seen in damp meadows in great numbers, especially in the autumn.

   • 1966, Sir Boris Petrovich Uvarov, Grasshoppers and locusts: a handbook of general acridology, page 379:

     Still another subdivision of terricoles consists of species of high alpine habitats with scanty and very short vegetation.

   • 1995, Mitchel P. McClaran, Thomas R. Van Devender, The Desert Grassland, page 169:

     Two types of grasshoppers are common in desert grasslands: terricoles, or soil mimics (the color pattern matches soil or rocks), and graminicoles, or grass mimics (the color pattern matches grass leaves).

Anagrams

• El Cerrito

French

Adjective

terricole (plural terricoles)

1. terricole

Further reading

• “terricole”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Italian

Adjective

terricole

1. feminine plural of terricolo

Anagrams

• coltrerei

Latin

Adjective

terricole

1. vocative masculine singular of terricolus