A vociferous buzz that radiates throughout parts of the United States makes the news鈥攐nce every 13 years.
From the brilliant first light of day to the still and dark of night, a serenade is being sung. It is a mating call years in the making. Millions of cicadas聽come up from their underground bedrooms after completing a very long incubation period.
The largest variety of 13-year cicadas, known as “Brood XIX,” open their red-eyes, shed their skin, spread their wings, sing their song, eventually mate, and, like聽a Greek tragedy聽of the genus Tibicen kind, meet their death. All within a span of about聽two months.
Why is it called a cicada?
There is no proper English word for the cicada.聽聽The Ancient Greek term is tettix and the modern Greek is tzitzikas. The modern English term is derived from the Latin cicada meaning 鈥渂uzzer.” Like the Greek variations, the name is onomatopoeic.
In other words, it is an imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent鈥攊n this case the buzzing noise made when the male cicada vibrates certain membranes, or tymbals on its body鈥攅mitting a “love song” that, to the ears of other species, sounds like a droning buzz. This process is called stridulation.
(What does onomatopoeia have to do with a bag of chips? Find out here.)
Stridulation is from the Latin stridulus meaning, 鈥済iving a shrill sound, creaking.”
What’s love got to do with it?
The adult cicada is called an imago, the Latin term聽for 鈥渋mage.鈥� Imago is also defined as 鈥渁n idealized concept of a loved one, formed in childhood and retained unaltered in adult life.鈥� A cicada nymph transforms into an imago by leaving its exoskeleton shell, a process called molting. In addition to their lovesick cry, the shell left behind after molting is the second most recognized signifier of cicadas.
