Meanings
plural doryphores · alternative doriphore
- humorousrareA petty pedant, a person who complains about minor mistakes.
The idiomatic implications of such a word as doryphore in his own text is left for the ignorant to guess. (It means a Colorado beetle and, hence, a pest.)
1960 December 9, Daily Telegraph, page 191 more example
Often have I tried to supplement my vocabulary by inventing words, such as ‘couth’, or ‘doriphore’, or ‘hypoulic’, feeling that it is the duty as well as the pastime of a professional writer to make two words bloom where only one bloomed before.
1952 August 22, Harold Nicolson, Spectator, page 238
Origin
- Ancient Greekδορυφόρος“lance-bearing; lance-bearer”
- Frenchdoryphore“Colorado beetle”
- Englishdoryphore
A modification of doriphore, borrowed from French doryphore (“Colorado beetle”) by Harold Nicolson in 1952, presumably under the influence of the various senses of pest. The French term was a translation of the New Latin genus Doryphora, itself from Ancient Greek δορυφόρος (doruphóros, “lance-bearing; lance-bearer”).
More words from French, Ancient Greek
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
doryphore. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/doryphore
“doryphore.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/doryphore. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “doryphore,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/doryphore.
Source: doryphore on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.