gnat

[nat] /næt/

noun

any of certain small flies, especially the biting gnats or punkies of the family Ceratopogonidae, the midges of the family Chironomidae, and the black flies of the family Simuliidae.

British, mosquito.

Idioms

strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, to fuss about trifles while ignoring more serious matters.

Origin

before 900; Middle English; Old English gnæt(t); cognate with German (dial.) Gnatze

Related forms

gnatlike, adjective

Examples from the web for gnat

He would, however, confirm that the bug he swallowed was a gnat.
But a cellphone's speaker has all the oomph of a gnat humming.
They still have a pulse, but it is so faint it couldn't keep a gnat alive.
You'd have had all the impact of a gnat in a hurricane.
Every little gnat of irrelevancy may turn out to be what the poem is really about.
Scale means relative size, and obviously there's a mismatch between human-size tools and gnat-size machines.
But this would be straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel.
Blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
Which isn't saying much, as the same could be said of the average gnat.
Any small fly is commonly called a gnat or a midge, but flies of whatever kind are seldom popular, either large or small.

British Dictionary definitions for gnat

gnat

/næt/

noun

any of various small fragile biting dipterous insects of the suborder Nematocera, esp Culex pipiens (common gnat), which abounds near stagnant water

Derived Forms

gnatlike, adjective

Word Origin

Old English gnætt; related to Middle High German gnaz scurf, German dialect Gnitze gnat

Word Origin and History for gnat

Old English gnætt "gnat, midge, mosquito," earlier gneat, used of various small, flying insects, from Proto-Germanic *gnattaz (cf. Low German gnatte, German Gnitze); perhaps literally "biting insect" and related to gnaw.

The gnatte is a litil fflye, and hatte culex..he soukeþ blood and haþ in his mouþ a pipe, as hit were a pricke..And is a-countid a-mong volatiles..and greueþ slepinge men wiþ noyse & wiþ bytinge and wakeþ hem of here reste. [John of Trevisa, transl. of Bartholomew de Glanville's "De proprietatibus rerum," 1398]

gnat in Medicine

gnat (nāt)
n.
Any of various small, biting, two-winged flies, such as a biting midge or black fly.

gnat in Technology

language, tool
An Ada compiler written in Ada using the gcc code generator to allow easy porting to a variety of platforms. Gnat is the only Ada compiler that completely implements the Ada standard, including all the annexes.
The compiler is released under the GNU license and is currently maintained by Ada Core Technologies (ACT).
(https://gnat.com/).
(1999-06-24)

gnat in the Bible

only in Matt. 23:24, a small two-winged stinging fly of the genus Culex, which includes mosquitoes. Our Lord alludes here to the gnat in a proverbial expression probably in common use, "who strain out the gnat;" the words in the Authorized Version, "strain at a gnat," being a mere typographical error, which has been corrected in the Revised Version. The custom of filtering wine for this purpose was common among the Jews. It was founded on Lev. 11:23. It is supposed that the "lice," Ex. 8:16 (marg. R.V., "sand-flies"), were a species of gnat.