sembling
English
Etymology
Compare assembling.
Noun
sembling (uncountable)
- (zoology) The practice of attracting the males of Lepidoptera or other insects by exposing the female confined in a cage (as by collectors wishing to procure specimens).
- (Can we find and add a quotation of James William Tutt to this entry?)
- 1831, James Rennie, Insect Architecture:
- Upon this is founded the practice of sembling, as it is called by the London collectors, among whom, as we learn from Barbut and Harris, it has been long in use, for entrapping the males of the fox-moth […]
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “sembling”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)