kissing bug

noun

1. Informal.
   1. a person much given to kissing.
   2. an irresistible desire to kiss or be kissed.
2. any of several assassin bugs that attack humans, sometimes inflicting painful bites.

kissing bug

noun

1. a North American assassin bug, Melanolestes picipes, with a painful bite, usually attacking the lips or cheeks of man

Word History and Origins

Origin of kissing bug¹

An Americanism dating back to 1895–1900

Example Sentences

Other insects do this, such as the kissing bug, which uses a "stretch receptor" in its abdomen to monitor its size, Shingleton explained.

From Science Daily

Hernández’s “The Kissing Bug,” her investigation into a mysterious disease that recently won the PEN/Jean Stein award for the best book of 2021, is a finalist in the bisexual nonfiction category, which also includes Aisha Sabatini Sloan’s “Borealis,” Hasanthika Sirisena’s “Dark Tourist,” Jen Winston’s “Greedy” and Courtney Cook’s “The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces.”

From Seattle Times

The winners are Daisy Hernández’s “The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease”; Linda Hogan’s “The Radiant Lives of Animals,” a blend of poetry and prose; and Rachel Pastan’s “In the Field: A Novel,” inspired by the life of Nobel-winning cytogeneticist Barbara McClintock.

From Seattle Times

In "The Kissing Bug: The True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation's Neglect of a Deadly Disease," reporter, memoirist, and professor Daisy Hernández chronicles the story of these people, and the racially fraught history of this disease, which is incurable unless it's caught early and treated with a rare drug.

From Salon

So, he stuffed a crushed kissing bug into the eye of a young Black man, who, according to the researcher's personal correspondence, may have been a psychiatric patient at Austin State Hospital.

From Salon