wasp

Any of several families of winged stinging insects of the order Hymenoptera, characterized by a thin stalk between the thorax and the abdomen. Wasps can be social or solitary. Among social wasps, the queens devote themselves to egg laying, the fertilized eggs producing female workers; the males come from unfertilized eggs and have no sting. The larvae are fed on insects, but the mature wasps feed mainly on fruit and sugar. In winter, the fertilized queens hibernate, but the other wasps die.

Paper wasps, family Vespidae, include the common paper wasp Polistes annularis, hornets, and yellow jackets (both genus Vespula). Potter wasps, mason wasps, and mud daubers all use mud with which to construct their nests.

Wasps evolved 200 million years ago in the Triassic period as stingless plant-feeders. By the Jurassic period, 50 million years later, they had developed the constricted waist, a sting, and become parasitic.

A stingless wasp thought to have become extinct 20 million years ago was identified in 1995 as living in pine forests in the Sierra Nevada mountains, California. The 8-mm/0.3-in long wasp has an undivided thorax and abdomen, and is a member of the family Xylelidae. In August 2001, a new family of wasps was discovered in New Zealand. They were named Maamingidae, from the Maori word for trickster, because they have heads that resemble one related wasp family, and abdomens that resemble another.

WASP

Common (frequently derogatory) term to describe the white elite in US society, specifically those educated at Ivy League universities and belonging to the Episcopalian Church.

The term was popularized by US sociologist E Digby Baltzell in his book The Protestant Establishment (1964).