this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
1349 points (99.2% liked)

Science Memes

17730 readers
1699 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] smeg@feddit.uk 28 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Does "bug" have a technical definition? If so then it's news to me and everyone who uses it to mean pretty much any small invertebrate (or microorganism, or software defect).

[โ€“] NeelixBiederman@hexbear.net 9 points 1 day ago (3 children)

"bug" is a technical definition, surprisingly

[โ€“] smeg@feddit.uk 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Entomologists reserve the term bug for Hemiptera or Heteroptera, which does not include other arthropods or insects of other orders such as ants, bees, beetles, or butterflies. In some varieties of English, all terrestrial arthropods (including non-insect arachnids and myriapods) also fall under the colloquial understanding of bug.

Sounds like those entomologists should have tried a bit harder either in educating the masses or choosing names!

[โ€“] Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

Not really fair to blame academics for common misuse of a term from their respective field, they're all vastly outnumbered and people can be extremely stubborn when being corrected on terminology

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)