vet / veteran / veterinarian

16 July 2025

Vet has three distinct meanings. It can be a verb meaning to examine thoroughly, especially of a person slated for a position of responsibility; it can be a noun meaning a doctor who treats animals; and it can be a noun meaning an experienced person, especially a soldier or a former soldier.

The soldier sense of vet is a clipping of veteran, an Early Modern (or perhaps very late medieval) borrowing from classical Latin veteranus, meaning experienced, mature, and especially applied to soldiers. An early use of veteran is in Stephen Hawes 1504 Example of Vertu, where it refers to a knight who has killed a dragon:

Than came dame fayth that lady gloryous
Welcome she sayd with wordes amyable
I am ryght glad ye ar so vyctoryous
Of that foule dragon so abhomynable
She sayd that I was euermore stable
In her in dede eke worde and thought
Or elles my labour had ben to nought

Than spake the lady fayre dame charyte
Welcome vertue the noble veteran
Sythens that ye alway haue loued me
From the fyrst season that ye began
Bothe in your youth & syth ye were man
Ye haue had me in humble reuerence
And haue ben ruled by my preemynence

The clipping of veteran to vet was in place by the mid nineteenth century.

The animal doctor sense of vet is a clipping of veterinarian and veterinary. These words are also Early Modern borrowings from the classical Latin veterinarius, which was used as an adjective related to livestock and as a noun to a person who treated sick animals. We see the Latin words in Thomas Cooper’s 1578 Thesaurus linguæ, hinting that they were starting to appear in English usage:

Veterinàrius, veterenarij, m.g. Col. He that letteth horses or mules to hyre: a muletter: an horsecourser: an hackney man. Veterinárius. Col. An horseleach, or ferrour.

Veterinârius, Adiect. vt Veterinaria medicina. Col. The craft or science of an horseleache.

But we see veterinarian fully anglicized, with an English ending, in Thomas Browne’s 1646 Pseudodoxia epidemica:

The gall of an horse was accounted poyson, and therefore at the sacrifices of horses in Rome, it was unlawfull for the Flamen but to touch it; but with more difficulty, or hardly at all is that reconcilable which is delivered by our Countreyman, and received veterinarian, whose words in his master-piece, and Chapter of diseases from the gall, are somewhat too strict, and scarce admit a Reconciliation.

Veterinarian is the term used in North America, but in Britain one will also see veterinary used as a noun, a clipping of veterinary surgeon.

The clipping vet in this sense dates to at least the mid nineteenth century. (The OED marks this clipping as “chiefly British,” which is incorrect and inexplicable. It’s extremely common in North America, with the abbreviated form being perhaps more common even than the full veterinarian.)

The verb to vet was initially used to mean subjecting an animal to an examination by a veterinarian. We see this sense in Annie Thomas’s 1891 novel The Roll of Honor, where it is used in reference to a racehorse before a competition:

Have you seen Culverfield? The beast is going about saying that Beau is shaky in his fore legs. I shall have him vetted before the races, or they will hang back and won't plunge on him.

But it quickly acquired a more general sense of subjecting a person to examination prior to approval, and this sense carries with it a connotation of being treated with less than the respect one normally accords fellow humans, as one might a piece of livestock. We see this sense in B. M. Croker’s 1898 Peggy of the Bartons, in which the titular character, newly married to a soldier and stationed in India, is to be subjected to examination and approval by the other wives in the regiment:

The married people in this regiment are a desperately slow set, very different to the Blunderbores; they never entertain, or ask you to put your legs under their mahogany; but we will make a new departure. You will be having them round to “vet” you—at least, Mother Vallancy, I don't know about Mrs. Hesketh and Mrs. Timmins, as I never left a pasteboard on either of them. Life is too short and too pleasant to bother about calling on stupid, dowdy frumps.

Today, the verb to vet is commonly used in the context of investigation prior to the issuance of a government security clearance or elevation to some position of responsibility.

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Sources:

Browne, Thomas. Pseudodoxia epidemica. London, T. H. for Edward. Dod, 1646, 3.2, 108–109. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

Cooper, Thomas. Thesaurus linguæ, London: Henry Denham, 1578, s.v. veterinarius, sig. Qqqqqq.1. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

Croker, B. M. Peggy of the Bartons. New York: R. F. Fenno, 1898, 138. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Hawes, Stephen. Example of Vertu. London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1504, sig. ff.3v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2017, s.v. vet, v., vet, n.2, veterinarian, n. & adj., veterinary, adj. & n., vet, n.1 & adj.2, veteran, n. & adj.

Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879, s.v. veteranus, veterinarius.

Thomas, Annie (Annie Hall Cudlip). The Roll of Honor. New York: John W. Lovell, 1891, 130. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Mark Buckawicki, 2014. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.

nuclear option

The “Ivy King” US nuclear test, Enewetak Atoll, 1952; at 500 kilotons it was the largest fission bomb ever detonated

14 July 2025

The term nuclear option is used figuratively, especially in politics, to refer to a response that threatens “mutual assured destruction.” It is, as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it, “the most drastic of the possible responses to a situation.” But of course, it does have a more literal original sense. 

It first appears in the early 1960s referring to the choice of a country to develop nuclear weapons. It appears in an article in the March 1962 issue of the American Political Science Review in reference to Britain’s decision to acquire a nuclear arsenal ten years earlier:

Nuclear forces were also thought to increase positive British influence over the United States by undertaking a share in the task of deterrence and demonstrating technological skill. Moreover the strategic nuclear option was a policy for which both the weapons and a doctrine existed.

That same year, it was used to refer to India’s potential for nuclear weapons in the title of a book review, “The Nuclear Option,” in the New Left Review. The review was of Leonard Beaton and John Maddox’s The Spread of Nuclear Weapons. The phrase does not appear in the review itself, only the title, but the following explains what the title refers to

Thus it emerges that India has an extensive nuclear programme designed to give it an option on nuclear weapons in about 1963. Very little is known about this in India, and Mr. Nehru, who is Minister of Atomic Energy as well as Prime Minister, seldom speaks about it: but from the analysis the book provides, it seems probable that India will go ahead and make nuclear weapons if the Chinese “menace” is considered to warrant it.

Beaton and Maddox’s book does not use the phrase either but makes extensive use of option in the context of the decision to acquire nuclear weapons. India demonstrated it had the capability to build a nuclear arsenal in 1974 with its detonation of a “peaceful” nuclear explosion, and it formally took the nuclear option in 1989, establishing an arsenal of the weapons probably by 1994 and openly testing one in 1998.

Literal use of nuclear option would also come to be used to refer the decision to use nuclear weapons in a war and also, less menacingly, in respect to the choice to use nuclear power for the generation of electricity.

The figurative sense of nuclear option was in place by the early 1990s. The earliest use I’m aware of is in 1993 in the context of UK Prime Minister John Major threatening a general election if a rebellious group of backbenchers in his party did not back him on the decision not to join the social aspects of the European Union. As recorded in The Independent on 23 July 1993:

Today John Major binds his own future as Prime Minister to the policy that lies at the heart of his Government’s meaning. He has detonated what one of his close friends called “the nuclear option”: back the social chapter opt-out or I’ll blow the party apart at a general election. Given the question, it seems certain he will win.

This incident and the phrase appeared in the American press in the same context. From the Washington Post, dateline also of 23 July 1993, an article that was syndicated widely in other papers:

To win the support of rebels within his own Conservative Party, Major had to threaten them with what became known as the “nuclear option”—he would resign as prime minister, dissolve Parliament and call a general election if they voted against him Friday. With the Conservatives lagging far behind in the polls, for the rebels to defy Major would have been, in the words of one Tory, “like turkeys voting for Christmas.”

Nuclear option would come to be used in American politics in the twenty-first century, most notably in reference to threats to end the filibuster in the US Senate.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Beaton, Leonard and John Maddox. The Spread of Nuclear Weapons. New York: Praeger, 1962. Archive.org.

Marr, Andrew. “The Haunting Resonance of a Beaten Leader’s Last Show. Independent (London), 23 July 1993, 1/1. Gale Primary Sources: The Independent Historical Archive.

Martin, Laurence W. “The Market for Strategic Ideas in Britain: the ‘Sandys Era.’” American Political Science Review, 56.1, March 1962, 26–41 at 27/2. JSTOR.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, 2003, nuclear option, n.

Roberts, Adam. “The Nuclear Option.” New Left Review, Winter 1962, 124–25 at 125. ProQuest: Scholarly Journals.

Robinson, Eugene. “Major Survives Vote of Confidence; Europe Pact Approved” (23 July 1963) Washington Post, 24 July 1963, A12/2–3. ProQuest: Newspapers.

Image credit: US Department of Energy, 1952. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.

concentration camp

Gate at the Auschwitz concentration camp

31 January 2025

(Updated 13 July 2025 with the citations from the Hansard database and the Guardian)

One might, with some justification, think that the term concentration camp, like the term genocide, came out of Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II, but that is not the case. The term is almost half a century older, coming out of another war, the Cuban War of Independence (1895–98).

Concentration camp is an anglophone term to describe the camps in which the Spanish government of Cuba resettled what they called reconcentrados, a word that was also borrowed into English at the time. The earliest example of concentration camp that I have found is in a report from a US consul to Cuba that was reported in Michigan’s Copper Country Evening News on 24 May 1897:

A consular report from Cuba tells of a new order of concentration. The effect of it will be to add greatly to the horrors of the situation. The suffering will be increased, and the deaths will be more numerous. The order, so far as the consul knows, applies to about one-third of the province of Santa Clara. This is the region of sugar estates.

Obliged to form camps.

Under the original order of concentration the agricultural population was obliged to form camps at the centrals, or grinding plants, of such estates as maintained a Spanish garrison. This permitted the farming population to gather in bodies of from 500 to 1,000. By this distribution in small bodies the reconcentrados were able to find some subsistence. The smaller concentration has been attended with less hardship than the larger. The new order just made by the Spanish authorities abolishes the concentration camps on the sugar estates. It directs that only [sic] points of concentration in the district shall be the cities having municipal organizations. In this district there are but three “municipals,” as they are called.

Must Move to Three Towns.

To these three points the entire farming population will now be driven. The report from the consul says:

“There are twenty-five estates on which the camps of reconcentrados had been established. The camps averaged 500 persons. Now these persons, 12,500 in all, must move to the three towns. In the camps on the estates they had built shanties, which must be abandoned. That, however, is not the worst feature. They had planted gardens and were about to realize food crops. All must be left behind, and the 12,500 must be added to the three large camps, where the people are starving. The situation is becoming worse every day, and this new order is going to aggravate it.

Another early use is in the Louisville Courier Journal of 17 July 1897. Weyler was the Spanish governor-general of Cuba General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau:

“In the beginning of the concentration,” this American writes, “the people driven into the towns were occasionally allowed to go to the country on passes and search for food to bring back to the camp. Having such passes, they sometimes escaped the notice of the scouting parties. Now, however, the Spanish columns have received orders from Weyler to shoot any one, whether furnished with a pass or not, wherever found outside of the concentration camp. I will give an example of the operation of this new order, to show how it works. The little town of Mata is situated near the railroad. It had in time of peace about 100 inhabitants and four stores. Under concentration 3,500 reconcentrados have been collected there.”

While the Spanish did have terms for the people who were interned in such camps, concentrados and reconcentrados, they did not have a special term for the camps themselves. The term campo de concentración did not appear until 1918.

The Cuban War of Independence ended in 1898 with the intervention of the United States on the Cuban side, a theater in the global Spanish-American War, which also netted the United States the Philippines as a colony. But concentration camps would again appear in another colonial war, the Boer War in South Africa (1899–1902), when the British interned many Dutch Boer settlers and Indigenous peoples in such camps. There is this use of both concentration camp and camps of concentration in the transcript of British parliamentary debate on 17 June 1901 from the Hansard database:

MR. JOHN ELLIS
(Nottinghamshire, Rusheliffe)

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he can now inform the House as to the number and situation of the camps of concentration formed in Cape Colony, and how many men, women, and children are confined therein, and what have been the figures of mortality therein.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR
(Mr. BRODRICK, Surrey, Guildford)

The places where the camps have been formed are:—Kimberley, Orange River Camp (near Hopetown), Vryburg, Warrenton, and Boer Exile Camp at Port Elizabeth. Lord Kitchener has promised me some figures by telegraph as to the numbers and mortality,

MR. C. P. SCOTT
(Lancashire, Leigh)

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will state the numbers of white persons now or recently in the concentration camps in Natal and the Transvaal, Orange River, and Cape Colonies respectively; also the dietary for adults and for children in force in these several districts. I beg also to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he can state what regulations are now in force in the various concentration camps in South Africa as to the detention of the women and children confined in them; and whether he will consider the desirability of permitting at least those women and children who have no male person with them in the camps, and who have friends or relatives in Cape Colony willing to receive them, to leave the camps and go to these friends.

Scott, in addition to being a Liberal MP, was the longtime editor of the Manchester Guardian. The following day, 18 June 1901, the Guardian reported on the debate under the headline, “The ‘Concentration’ Camps in South Africa.” Other English-language newspapers reporting on the debate and on the Boer War also started using concentration camp from this date.

And like the Spanish campo de concentración, the Afrikaans konsentrasiekamp was coined as a historical term in 1921.

In contrast, the German Konzentrationslager didn’t make an appearance until 1920, referring to hypothetical camps, and 1933, referring to real ones. The Spanish, Afrikaans, and German terms are calques of the English one.

There is a more innocuous sense of concentration camp that also dates to the Spanish-American War, that is with the meaning of a military assembly location. There is this from the Boston Daily Advertiser with a dateline of 10 May 1898:

Washington, May 10.—Maj.-Gen. Sewell has been assigned to command the concentration camp near Falls Church, Va. This is taken as an indication that the general has concluded to accept his military command, risking his tenure in office as a senator thereby.

(The OED has similar quotation from 12 May, but that one is incorrectly dated. Both the dictionary and NewspaperArchive.com’s metadata give the date as 1897, but it is actually from a year later.)

This military sense of concentration camp would also get some use in the British military. From the Friend of India of 7 September 1899:

The Government of India have sanctioned the Imperial Service troops taking part in the coming winter’s manœuvres, and it is settled that the Mysore Cavalry will join the concentration camp near Bangalore.

Of course, unfavorable press about the camps in South Africa, and of course the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, pretty much ended this military sense of the phrase.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

“The ‘Concentration’ Camps in South Africa.” Manchester Guardian, 18 June 1901, 5/1. ProQuest Historical Newspaper.

“Has Sewell Accepted?” Boston Daily Advertiser (Massachusetts), 11 May 1898, 1/5. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2015, s.v. concentration camp, n., concentrado, n.; June 2009, s.v. reconcentrado, n.

“Telegram from Lee.” Copper Country Evening News (Calumet Michigan), 24 May 1897, 1/2. Library of Congress: Chronicling America.

“Troops Ordered to Cuba.” Elkhart Weekly Truth (Indiana), 12 May 1898, 4/6. NewspaperArchive.com. (Note the database’s metadata incorrectly gives the date as 1897, an error which the OED repeats.)

U.K. Parliament, House of Commons. “South Africa—Sir David Barbour’s Report,” 17 June 1901. Hansard.

“Weyler’s Victims.” Louisville Courier Journal, 17 July 1897, 9/5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Winter Military Manœuvres” (5 September). Friend of India, 7 September 1899, 12/3. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.

Photo credit: Xiquinhosilva, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

leopards eating people’s faces

11 July 2025

The fictional and satirical Leopards Eating Faces Party was the brainchild of Adrian Bott, who posted this tweet to Twitter on 16 October 2015.

The sentiment, in the midst of the run-up to the 2016 presidential election expressed the frustration of progressives at those who supported Republican candidates whose stated policies ran contrary to the interests of those who supporting them.

The New Yorker published this cartoon by Phil Noth on 29 August 2016, while it does not use the same words, the metaphor of the prey voting for the predator is the same:

The cartoon features sheep looking at a billboard with a picture of a wolf in a business suit and the words “I am going to eat you.” One of the sheep says, “He tells it like it is.”

After a somewhat slow build, this metaphor for voter regret, or buyer’s remorse, went viral on social media. Following the first election of Donald Trump, the subreddit /r/LeopardsAteMyFace launched on 25 March 2017, containing examples of tweets and comments from people who were surprised when the politicians they had voted for fulfilled their campaign promises and did something that negatively affected them. For instance, on 28 May 2025, this tweet from a Trump voter bemoaning a raid by US immigration authorities at his workplace was posted to the subreddit:

Jake Cowan—in Florida State University

Lost a lot of good men today. I like Trump but this isn’t what I voted for. This will absolutely kill the economy in construction. I thought he was going after gang members and criminals with warrants. Not hard working guys.

But the sentiment was not restricted to Republicans and Trump voters. Nor is it even limited to the United States, being applied to those in the United Kingdom who regretted voting for Brexit, for example. In her blog of 29 January 2019, writer Carrie Marshall used leopards eating your face to refer to trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFS):

There’s a well-known gag on Twitter: “I can’t believe leopards are eating my face!” says woman who voted for the “Leopards Eating Your Face Party”.

In the US and increasingly in the UK, self-described “radical feminists” who hate trans people are linking arms with virulently anti-women, anti-abortion, anti-LGBT groups such as the Heritage Foundation, convinced that these leopards will only eat other people’s faces.

These leopards are behind much of the anti-trans legislation US republicans are trying to force through, much of which just so happens to restrict cisgender women’s reproductive rights. 

Marshall’s blog post also included Noth’s cartoon.

And the metaphor moved from the internet to traditional media in 2019, although the initial uses by traditional outlets featured the woes of Republican insiders rather than ordinary voters, a significant difference. Jill Filopovic wrote the following for CNN on 8 May 2019:

That the Trump family throws people under the bus when they become inconvenient is not news. Just ask his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Or his former fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen. Or former administration members Rex Tillerson, H. R. McMaster, and Dina Powell. Or the entire nation of Canada.

The question isn't who Trump has screwed over or fed to the wolves. It's who he hasn't. I'm sorry Winston Wolkoff feels wronged. But it's hard not to hear her complaints sound a little too much like Adrean Bott's viral tweet: "'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party."

And Michelle Goldberg wrote in the New York Times on 4 December 2020:

Since Trump’s defeat, the MAGA revolution has begun devouring its own. As it does, some conservatives are discovering the downsides of having a president who spreads malicious conspiracy theories, subverts faith in democracy and turns the denial of reality into a loyalty test. As the internet meme goes, people voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party, and now the leopards are turning on them.

While its wording refers to electoral politics, the phrase’s sentiment is not limited to that sphere. Physician Yoo Jung Kim used the phrase in reference to COVID-19 anti-vaxxers in a USA Today op-ed on 12 August 2021:

Recently, Michael Freedy, a 39-year-old Las Vegas casino employee and father of five, caught COVID-19 while on vacation. He texted his fiancé from the hospital, “I should have gotten the damn vaccine.” He later died.

Freedy’ story went viral because his text highlighted the visceral regret felt by patients on their deathbeds, especially now COVID-19 is more preventable in the United States. While many commentators expressed sympathy to his grieving family, some were vicious. A particularly vocal source of COVID-19 schadenfreude can be seen in Reddit communities such as “CovIdi”ts" and “LeopardsAteMyFace.”

In one thread, users wrote: “It started as a virus and mutated into an IQ test.” “Guy wen from being a moron to a dead moron.” “If you die of Covid because you refused to get the vaccine then I have no sympathy or pity for you.”

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Bott, Adrian (@cavalom). X.com (formerly Twitter.com), 16 October 2015.

cwhmoney555. “I Didn’t Think He was Going to Deport Those Immigrants!” Reddit.com, 29 May 2025.

Filipovic, Jill. “If You Work for Trump, Expect to Be ‘Thrown Under Bus.’” CNN Commentary, 8 May 2019. ProQuest: Wire Feed.

Goldberg, Michelle. “The MAGA Revolution Devours Its Own.” New York Times, 4 December 2020.

Kim, Yoo Jung. “Mocking Unvaccinated Is Counterproductive.” USA Today, 12 August 2021, 7A/3–4. ProQuest: Newspapers.

“Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.” Knowyourmeme.com, accessed 11 June 2025.

Marshall, Carrie. “The ‘Leopards Eating Your Face’ Party.” Bigmouth Strikes Again (blog), 29 January 2019.

Noth, Phil. “He Tells It Like It Is” (cartoon). New Yorker, 29 August 2016, 47.

Image credits:

Tweet: Adrian Bott, 2015. X.com. Fair use of copyrighted tweet to illustrate the topic under discussion.

New Yorker cartoon: Phil Noth, 2016. Fair use of copyrighted image to illustrate the topic under discussion.

Tweet: Jake Cowan, 2025. Reddit. Fair use of copyrighted Reddit post to illustrate the topic under discussion.

love bug

Two conjoined love bugs, Plecia nearctica

9 July 2025

Back when I lived in Texas, each spring I would be subjected to two assaults. The first was by allergies, which I’d experienced before when living in more temperate climes, but which are especially bad in the Texas spring when everything is in bloom. The other was by swarms of Plecia nearctica, commonly known as the love bug. They are so called because they are most commonly seen when copulating, which is pretty much continuously during their short lifespans, appearing as two-headed bugs floating lazily through the air. They are also known as honeymoon flies, fuck bugs, and telephone bugs. This last name is a bit mysterious but is perhaps because, with their black color, they bear a vague resemblance to an old-time telephone.

Love bugs are common in Texas and all along the Gulf Coast of the United States. Originally from Central America, they were first recorded in the United States in 1911 and have been moving northward, now found as far north as North Carolina. They are mostly harmless. They don’t bite and are really only a nuisance because they tend to swarm, blackening car hoods and windshields, although their body chemistry is acidic and can damage the paint on older cars if not cleaned off quickly. The name love bug is also applied to other species that exhibit the same mating behavior, such as the Plecia longiforceps, originally native to the East Asian subtropics but which has been moving northward in recent years due to climate change, and annual swarms are now plaguing Seoul, Korea.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has a citation from 1937, but when viewed in context it’s not clear what insect is being referred to, or even if it is an insect at all. The article, about a Nebraska entomologist, that appears in the 25 July 1937 edition of the Lincoln, Nebraska Sunday Journal and Star reads:

There’s a popular song that goes like this: “The love bug will get you if you don’t watch out.”

It is not the love-bug though that is worrying the Nebraska farmer these days. He can put up with love-bugs, kissing-bugs and lady-bird beetles from spring until frost and from sun up until the chores are all done, but there are hundreds of other kinds, large and small, that make him fret at night and cuss during the day.

The first instance of love bug in the piece is clearly a reference to the metaphorical source of erotic infatuation. The second mention of love-bug is likely also metaphorical, and the third may refer to an actual insect, but if so it’s not clear which species.

The Dictionary of American Regional English records uses of love bug referring to Plecia nearctica from 1968 in north-central Florida and southeast Louisiana. The Florida description reads:

Love bugs—black-and-orange insects which mate in late August through September. They are seen coupled in thick swarms for as long as three weeks.

And Louisiana:

Love bug—a little black-and-orange insect about three-eighths of an inch long. They mate at certain times of the year, smearing windshields and covering pedestrians. You never see one separately; they are always coupled.

That metaphorical meaning of love bug is much older. But it seems this love bug was originally envisioned as a bacterium rather than an insect. There is this clearly tongue-in-cheek description of pathogen in Georgia’s Macon Telegraph and Messenger of 2 August 1882:

The Love Bug.

San Francisco Post

A California physician who discovered a new disease—love madness—has been experimenting with the persons afflicted therewith, and has produced the “love parasite,” or bacillus microccus. This he cultivated up to the twentieth generation, and with the parasites of that generation he inoculated a number of subjects. The inoculation was invariably successful, symptoms of the disease appearing a very short time after the operation. A bachelor, aged 50 years, on the first day after inoculation, had his whiskers dyed, ordered a suit of new clothes and a set of false teeth, bought a top buggy, a bottle of hair restorer, a diamond ring and a guitar, and began reading Byron’s poems. The inoculation produced symptoms of the same nature in a young lady of 45. She spent $5 at a drug store for cosmetics, sang “Empty is the Cradle,” sent out invitations for a party, and complained that the Chico young men do not go into society. An inoculated youth of 17, employed in a country store, did up a gallon of molasses in a paper bag, but [sic] the cat in the butter tub and threw some fresh butter of the window. Finally he sat in a basket of eggs while looking at the photograph of a pretty girl and was discharged for his carelessness. The Chico doctor is still experimenting, and will soon lay lay the results of his observations before the medical world.

(I can’t find any records for the San Francisco Post.)

And here is one that is a metaphorical insect from the Indianapolis Star of 29 June 1907:

LOVE BUG STINGS AGED MAN FOR FIFTH TIME

Senile Bridegroom Proudly Makes Unique and Surprising Announcement of Coming Marriage to His Friend.

CHICAGO, June 28.—“Charlie, my son, I have been stung by the love bug the fifth time.” This was the announcement made today by Ossian Guthrie, 81 years old, of his marriage next Monday night to Mrs. Elizabeth F. Flower, 71 years old, 122 East Forty-second Place.

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Sources:

Bond, George. “Prof. D. B. Whelan Traps Insects, Studies distribution, and Determines Infestations.” Sunday Journal and Star (Lincoln, Nebraska), 25 July 1937, C-D—Two/1. NewspaperArchive.com.

Dictionary of American Regional English, 2013, s. v. love bug n, honeymoon fly n, fuck bug n, telephone bug n.

“The Love Bug.” Macon Telegraph and Messenger (Georgia), 2 August 1882, 2/5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Love Bug Stings Aged Man for Fifth Time.” Indianapolis Star, 19 June 1907, 1/4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Myung-hee Yi, et al. “Microbiome of Lovebug (Plecia longiforceps) in Seoul, South Korea.” Microbiology Spectrum, 12.7, July 2024, 1–10. DOI: 10.1128/spectrum.03809-23. National Library of Medicine: PubMed Central.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, 2008, s.v. love bug, n.

Rashid, Raphael. “Seoul Wrestles with How to Handing Invasion of ‘Lovebugs.’” Guardian, 30 June 2025.

Photo credit: Unknown photographer, 2005. Wikimedia Commons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lovebugs.jpg Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.