[L.]. Also anglicized in 7 blat.
1. By Roman writers and their translators applied to various insects shunning the light: a kind of moth, mite or beetle. Vaguely and empirically used by 17th-c. writers, but at length specialized as the generic name of the Cockroach.
1601. Holland, Pliny, II. 370. Two or three of these flies called Blattæ sodden in oile, make a soueraigne medicine to cure the eares.
1658. Rowland, trans. Moufet’s Theat. Ins., 998. There are three sorts of Blattæ; the soft Moth, the mill Moth, and the unsavoury or stinking Moth. Ibid. The worms of the belly some call Blattæ. Cardanus in one place calleth the worms that breed in meal or bran, Blattæ…. The Blatta is an Insect flying in the night, like to a Beetle, but wanteth the sheath wings.
1796. Stedman, Surinam (1813), II. xxiii. 179. Destroyed by the blata or cockroaches.
1816. Kirby & Sp., Entomol. (1843), I. 222. The all devouring Blatta or cockroach.
1830. Lyell, Princ. Geol. (1832), II. 148. The devastation of the ants and blattæ.
2. Purple; purple silk.
1658. Rowland, trans. Moufet’s Theat. Ins., 999. Much variety of opinion there is … of the colour of the Blat Moth, or the Blattean colour. For if these Insects … are the Blattæ truly so called, why should not the black be the Blat colour, rather than red purple colours?
1876. Rock, Text. Fabr., v. 39. The costly purple-dyed silks called ‘blatta.’
