¹beetle

Beetles are not usually stinging insects, at least in the cooler climates of North America and Europe, but Old English bitela, the ancestor of our modern word beetle, means literally “biter.” Actually, the speakers of Old English seem to have applied bitela to several not very beetle-like insects, such as cockroaches, which snack on our belongings—so the biting in question may be eating rather than defense. A related Old English word for an insect that has not survived into modern English is hrædbita literally “quick-biter.”