Forms: 7 cacarootch, 7–8 cockroche, 8 cock-roach, 7– cockroach. [app. ad. Sp. cucaracha (in Percival 1599) through cacarootch, Capt. John Smith’s representation of the Spanish (perhaps representing an older Sp. cacarucha: cf. Pg. caroucha); with assimilation, by popular etymology, to cock and app. to roach.
The Du. kakerlak is prob. also a popular perversion of the Sp.: cf. Creole Fr. coquerache.]
The name of orthopterous insects of the genus Blatta, esp. B. orientalis, a well-known large dark-brown beetle-like insect, commonly called black-beetle, nocturnal in habits, and very voracious, infesting kitchens, etc., in large numbers. Also the American species, B. occidentalis, larger and lighter brown, found in bakehouses.
1624. Capt. Smith, Virginia, V. 171. A certaine India Bug, called by the Spaniards a Cacarootch, the which creeping into Chests they eat and defile with their ill-sented dung.
1657. R. Ligon, Barbadoes (1673), 62. Next to these are Cockroches, a creature of the bigness and shape of a Beetle.
1740. Baker, Beetle, in Phil. Trans., XLI. 443. A Friend had sent me Three or Four Cock-Roches, or as Merian calls them, Kakkerlacæ, brought alive from the West-Indies.
1800. Gentl. Mag., Oct., 933/2. The true brown cock-roach of the West-Indies.
1813. Bingley, Anim. Biog. (ed. 4), III. 154. The Kakkerlac or American Cock-Roach, is very common in that country.
1859. Darwin, Orig. Spec., iii. (1878), 59. In Russia the small Asiatic cockroach has everywhere driven before it its great congener.
Hence Cock-roach Apple.
1756. P. Browne, Jamaica, 174. Love Apple, and Cock-roach Apple…. The smell of the apples is said to kill the Cock-roaches.
