roachless en · ADJ
Etymology
From roach + -less.
Meanings
- (not-comparable) Without a roach (part of a sail).
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(US, not-comparable) Without cockroaches.
For me, in the roachless home of those Nashville suburbs, it was irrelevant that in the past twenty years cockroaches have been identified as a leading cause of asthma, but for a boy growing up in a housing project, they may be why he has the disease, and they are almost certainly a contributing factor to the onset of his attacks.
1999, Richard Schweid, The Cockroach Papers: A Compendium of History and Lore, New York, N.Y.; London: Four Walls Eight Windows, →ISBN, page 108:Hence most of us, learning for the first time of DDT as a new miracle insect killer, think rather of summer days free of flies and summer evenings without mosquitoes, roachless houses and flealess dogs, than of a world without malaria or typhus.
1946, James Cornelius Leary, William I. Fishbein, Lawrence Cecil Salter, DDT and the Insect Problem, New York, N.Y.; London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., page 70:Since introducing HARRIS ROACH TABLETS many testimonials have been received by boosters who have tried the successful method of ridding your home of roaches. For a ROACHLESS HOUSE try “HARRIS ROACH TABLETS.”
1942 August 7, “Harris Roach Tablets Sure Death to Roaches”, in Tampa Morning Tribune, 49th year, number 219, Tampa, Fla., page nine:There is no end of the headings you can devise using “roach” in each, thus: The roach dies. Doom of roaches. Roaches no more. No roaches left. The end of roaches. Who has roaches. Roachless houses. Not one roach. Roaches will go. No roach escapes.
1900 September 10, “Tell It in the Headline”, in American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record, volume XXXVII, number 5 (whole 457), New York, N.Y.; Chicago, Ill., page 143, column 1: