reduviid, hemptera, pterygoid, cicadas, shellac, lac bug, Flintstone vitamins

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reduviid  (Latin reduvia  fragment, or hangnail)  \ri dyu’ vee id\  a large family of insects that are blood sucking hemipterous insects comprising the assassin bugs.

     This definition is worthy of a John Le Care novel.  I’m not sure how we go from hangnail or fragment to the reduviids.  (Actually it is part of the anatomy of the abdomen.)  This family of insects, hemiptera, includes 50,000 to 80,000 species…and I wonder what budding young Darwins,  or graduate students in entymology, categorized all these species.  

    So…hemiptera (Latin, ptera wing) \hem ip’tera\   These insects have two pairs of wings and also mouth parts for sucking fluids.  The ‘wing’ denotation is for part of the anatomy of 'fragments' attached to their abdomen.  The mouth parts are not a pleasant thought but, as consolation, this family of insects includes the poetic cicadas without which childhood memories of summer would be incomplete.  

     Also, these insects give us shellac and the dye cochineal or carmine. 

     In medicine, there are several words that use ptera (the ‘p’ being silent), such as the pterygoid bone of the skull near the sphenoid sinus.  It is a beautiful butterfly shaped bone that is ‘wing shaped.’

     Cicadas were first mentioned over 2,000 years ago in Homer’s Illiad.  (I have just reread The Odyssey and The Illiad but I don’t recall the cicadas playing a big part.)

   

     Here is a word journey: reduviid, hemipterous, lac bug, Southeast Asian word for 100,000, shellac, Flintstone vitamins…

    Reduviid’s also have something to do with children’s vitamins…   I was looking at the label of Flintstone vitamins at work and was surprised that one of the ingredients was shellac.  A varnish in a child's vitamins?  Unknown to me is the fact that shellac is a product of insects: the lac bug which is a reduviid.  These bugs suck the sap from the bark of a tree and excrete a shellac precursor.  The bark is scraped off and heated in canvas tubes over a fire, the liquid shellac dripping out.  It takes about 300,000 bugs to produce 2.2 lbs of shellac.  The Southeastern Asian word for 100,000 is “lac.”  The word shellac derives from French for ‘shell’ and ‘lac,” laque en ecailles (lac in thin pieces).  

     Shellac as been used for over 3,000 years…for example, on valuable pieces of furniture and precious dowry items and as a paint or varnish.  In the 1920’s and 30’s, most records were made of shellac until the invention of vinyl in 1949.  It is used on fine violas and pianos as well.

    Lastly, since shellac is edible, it is used as a glaze on pills (Flintstone Vitamins) and sweets (Jelly Bellys).