miller moth

English

Acronicta leporina

Euxoa auxiliaris

Noun

miller moth (plural miller moths)

1. Any of several species of moths with pale, dusty wings.
   • 1890, Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing, Jan of the Windmill: A Story of the Plains, page 29:

     One of those small white moths, known as '• millers," went past him. […]. Even the miller-moth had gone.

   • 1894, Thomas Hardy, “[A Few Crusted Characters.] The Superstitious Man’s Story”, in Life’s Little Ironies […], London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC, pages 253–254:

     [H]e saw one of those great white miller's souls as we call 'em—that is to say, a miller-moth—come from William's open mouth while he slept, and fly straight away.

   • 1984, Steven Laurence Kaplan, Provisioning Paris: Merchants and Millers in the Grain and Flour Trade, page 284:

     They caught a large moth called a miller for its dusty white wings, […] after which they crushed the miller-moth for his misdeeds.

   1. Any of the cutworm moths in genus Agrotis or in tribe Agrotini
      1. especially the army cutworm (Euxoa auxiliaris), in America
2. Acronicta leporina, in Britain
3. Cossus cossus (goat moth)

See also

• flour moth

References

• miller moth on Wikipedia.Wikipedia