Entom. Pl. tipulæ. [L. tippula (incorrectly tipula) a water-spider or water-bug; so used also by mediæval and early modern writers. The current use is due to Linnæus.] A genus of dipterous insects, typical of the family Tipulidæ or crane-flies, the common British species of which are familiarly known as daddy-long-legs.
[1658. Rowland, Moufet’s Theat. Ins., 1023. We shall take Gaza’s Tipulæ into our consideration among the Water-worms.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Tipula (Lat.), a Water-spider with six Feet, that runs on the top of the Water without sinking.
1817. Kirby & Sp., Entomol., xxiii. (1818), II. 371. Linné, in his Lapland tour, noticed a black Tipula which ran over the water, and turned round like a Gyrinus.]
1752. J. Hill, Hist. Anim., 36. The great Tipula. This is the largest and the most beautiful of the Tipula kind.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist. (1776), VIII. 152. The tipula is a harmless peaceful insect, that offers injury to nothing; the gnat is sanguinary and predaceous.
1831. Brit. Farmer’s Mag., VI. 321. The grub of this tipula commits its ravages chiefly in the first crop.
Hence Tipularian a., belonging or allied to the genus Tipula or family Tipulidæ; also as sb. (sc. insect); Tipulary a. = prec. adj.; Tipulid, Tipulidan, a. belonging to the family Tipulidæ; sb. an insect of this family, a crane-fly; Tipulideous a. = prec. adj.
1828. *Tipularian [see tipulidan].
1832. Macgillivray, trans. Humboldt’s Trav., xviii. (1836), 248. On the streams … the *tipulary flies do not make their appearance.
1852. Th. Ross, Humboldt’s Trav., II. xxiv. 438. Perhaps, also, the destruction of forests … will somewhat tend to diminish the torment of the tipulary insects.
1893. Athenæum, 20 May, 641/2. Dicranota, a Carnivorous *Tipulid Larva.
1817. Kirby & Sp., Entomol., xxii. (1818), II. 277. The grub of a kind of gnat…, and also another, probably of the *Tipulidan [ed. 1828 Tipularian] tribe…, have each a fleshy leg on the underside of the first segment. Ibid. (1826), Ill. xxix. 79. The eggs of … gnats and other Tipulidans [are] set afloat upon, or submerged in, the water.
1840. Westwood, Classif. Insects, II. 170. Checking the over-production of some of the minute *Tipulideous insects.
