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Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

milky disease en · NOUN

Meanings

  1. (uncountable) A disease of the white grubs of Japanese beetles, caused by a soil-dwelling bacterium, Paenibacillus popilliae.
    • 1972, United States Department of Agriculture, Plant Protection and Quarantine Programs, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, “The Japanese Beetle: How We Fight It,” p. 6, If possible, biological controls are used. One of these is milky disease, a bacterial disease that infects and kills the grub without causing harm to other animal life.
    • When ingested by a foraging beetle grub [the spores] multiply prodigiously in its blood, causing it to turn an abnormally white color, hence the popular name, “milky disease.” 1962, Rachel Carson, chapter 7, in Silent Spring, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 97:
  2. (uncountable) Synonym of grasserie (“disease of silkworms”).

Synonyms

grasserie · milky spore