chigoe means A small tropical flea, Tunga penetrans, whose females burrow under the skin of animals, including humans, and lay their eggs, causing strong irritation and sores.
chigoe is pronounced /ˈt͡ʃɪ.ɡoʊ/.
Etymology
Uncertain. Possibly from a Cariban language term such as Kari'na siko (“chigoe”) (early recorded variant chico), from Proto-Cariban *tikô, or else a West African borrowing such as Wolof or Yoruba jiga (“insect”). The eighteenth century historian Charlevoix refers to them as chique in his 1730 history of Hispaniola.
noun
- A small tropical flea, Tunga penetrans, whose females burrow under the skin of animals, including humans, and lay their eggs, causing strong irritation and sores.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- chigger 84% match — A chigoe (Tunga penetrans), a kind of flea found in tropical climates. vs chigoe →
- nigua 75% match — A tropical flea, the chigoe. vs chigoe →
- chagoma 59% match — An inflammatory nodule at the bite site of the reduviid bug which transmits Chagas disease. vs chigoe →
- pajahuello 56% match — The tick Ornithodoros coriaceus. vs chigoe →
- tsutsugamushi 56% match — A form of typhus caused by Orientia tsutsugamushi and transmitted by chiggers. vs chigoe →
- torsalo 55% match — A parasitic fly, Dermatobia hominis, which lives as a larva in the skin of mammals, including humans, and uses mosquitoes as a vector. vs chigoe →
- chinch 54% match — The bedbug (Cimex lectularius). vs chigoe →
- botfly 54% match — One of several dipterous insects of the family Oestridae, the larvae of which are parasites on many animals, including humans. vs chigoe →