A flying stinging insect of the order Hymenoptera, related to the bee and the ant, with a narrow waist and, in females and workers, a sting that can be used to inject venom.
Definitions
Acronym for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, used mainly in US English to refer to an upper-middle-class white American Protestant.
Contextual examples
Idioms
1. wasp-waisted
Having a very narrow waist.
“The dress was cut in a wasp-waisted style popular in the 1950s.”
Word history
From Old English wæps, wæsp, related to Dutch wesp and German Wespe; the sense of the acronym WASP is a 20th-century coinage in American English.
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