Noun: gnat
Sample Sentences
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[A]nd his servant was beside him with a fan to keep away the flies and gnats. [1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 293:]
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"Away thou whining gnat, and trouble me not!" [1971, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 115:]
Nouns inflected like gnat
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English gnat, from Old English gnætt (“gnat; midge; mosquito”), from Proto-West Germanic *gnatt, *gnattu, from Proto-Germanic *gnattaz, *gnattuz (“gnat”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰneHdʰn-, *gʰneHd- (“to gnaw; scratch”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰen- (“to gnaw; bite; scratch; grind”). Cognate with Low German Gnatte (“gnat”), dialectal Swedish gnatt (“mosquito”), German Gnatz (“scabs; rash; scabies; stinginess”). Related also gnit and gnaw. See: Middle English Nouns '
gnat', Old English Nouns '
gnætt'.