Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Pesticide |
PesticideNoun1. A chemical used to kill pests (as rodents or insects). Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "pesticide" was first used: 1939. (references) |
| Domain | Definitions |
Agriculture | A substance used to kill, control, repel, or mitigate any pest. Insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides, herbicides, and germicides are all pesticides. Environmental Protection Agency regulates pesticides under authority of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). In addition, under FIFRA, a substance used as a plant regulator, defoliant, or desiccant is defined as a pesticide and regulated accordingly. All pesticides must be registered and carry a label approved by EPA. (references) |
Botanical | A substance used for killing pests, e.g., mice. Combretum, Coriaria, Dieffenbachia, Drepanocarpus, Gliricidia, Hura, Jatropha, Persea, Rourea. (references) |
Environment | Substances or mixture there of intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any pest. Also, any substance or mixture intended for use as a plant regulator, defoliant, or desiccant. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
A pesticide is a chemical used to control, to repel, to attract or to kill pests, for example, insects, weeds, birds, mammals, fish, or microbes, that are considered a nuisance. Pesticides are usually, but not always, poisons.
DDT is an example of a once heavily used pesticide, while glyphosate today is the world's most used herbicide.
Some crops, such as BT Corn, are genetically engineered to create their own pesticides.
In the US, all materials intended for sale and use as pesticides must be registered with the EPA. The process may be long, complex, and expensive, because research must prove that the material is effective against the intended pest, yet safe to use. During the registration processs a pesticide label is created, which has directions for proper use of the material. Use not consitent with the label is pesticide misuse.
Some pesticides are considered too hazardous for sale to the general public, and these are designated restricted pesticides. Only certified applicators, who have taken a course and passed an examination, may purchase and use restricted pesticides. Records of sales and use are kept, and can be auditied by the EPA.
"Read and follow label directions." is often quoted by county extension agents, garden columnists and others teaching about pesticides. This is not merely good advice; it is the law, for the USA. Similar laws exist in much of the rest of the world. The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act of 1972 (FIFRA) set up the current system of pesticide regulations. It was amended somewhat by the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996. Its purpose is to make pesticide manufacture, distrubution and use as safe as possible. The most important point for users to understand is that it a violaton to apply any pesticide in a manner not in accordance with the label for that pesticide. It is a crime to so so intentionally.
Most pesticides present some danger to humans when used to control weeds or insects on food crops. This is one basis for the organic food movement. Certain food crops such as apples, peppers, celery, cherries, grapes, nectarines, peaches, pears, potatoes, red raspberries, spinach, and strawberries contain residual pesticides after being washed or peeled, although they may still meet government limits which are set to minimize exposure not eliminate it. These crops are the so-called dirty dozen as designated by the Environmental Working Group which has issued a Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce.
Besides human health risks, pesticides also pose dangers to the environment. Non-target organisms can be severely impacted. In some cases where a pest insect normally has some controls from a beneficial insect predator or parasite, an insecticide application can kill both pest and beneficial. The control insect almost always takes longer to recover than the pest. Applications for adult mosquitoes, for example, may momentarily depress mosquito populations, but cause a larger population in the long run, by damaging controlling factors. Pesticides are also a factor in pollinator decline, which is a food supply issue.
See also herbicide, DDT, pesticide misuse, FIFRA pesticide poisoningExamples of pesticides
Chemical engineers continually develop new pesticides to produce enhancements over previous generations of products.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Pesticide."
| The following table is compiled from various sources, across various languages. When English abbreviations or acronyms come from a non-English source, this is noted. | |||
| Entry | Source | Expression | Field |
| PEX | English | Pesticide exposure index | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |||
Crosswords: Pesticide |
| English words defined with "pesticide": arsenic, arsenic trioxide, arsenous anhydride, arsenous oxide ♦ bichloride of mercury ♦ chloropicrin, corrosive sublimate ♦ mercuric chloride, mercury chloride ♦ nitrochloroform ♦ pesticide poisoning, phosphine ♦ spray. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "pesticide": Botanical Pesticide, broad-spectrum pesticide ♦ FIFRA Pesticide Ingredient ♦ MEDICAL COORDINATOR, PESTICIDE USE ♦ non-selective pesticide ♦ Pesticide Data Program, Pesticide Recordkeeping Program, Pesticide Regulation Notice, Pesticide Tolerance ♦ Resistance, pesticide ♦ Tolerance, pesticide residue. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Pesticide" is also a word in the following language with English translations in parentheses. French (pesticidal, pesticide). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | He's committed pesticide! (James and the Giant Peach; writing credit: Karey Kirkpatrick) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
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Periodicals |
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Consumer Goods | |||
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Farmer spraying pesticide as part of pest management plan. Georgia.Credit: Jeff Vanuga. |  | Pesticide application on leaf lettuce in Yuma, Az.Credit: Jeff Vanuga. |
 | A water quality project in the Lake Rathbun watershed in southern Iowa checks nutrient and pesticide levels in water, as well as other possible non-point source pollutants.Credit: Lynn Betts. |  | Kenneth Grimes, NRCS Soil Conservationist, Fresno County, CA, works with limited resource farmers, diary and range. Currently Grimes is assisting Hmoung farmers in the Fresno, CA, area with education, fertility, water and pesticide management. [Slide 97CS.Credit: Bob Nichols. |
 | Spraying pesticide.Credit: USDA. |  | The interagency IR-4 program ensures the safety of so-called minor-use chemicals before they are approved for commercial agricultural production. At Salinas, California, ARS agronomist Sharon Benzen displays test-plot-grown broccoli that will be used to determine pesticide residue levels. P.Credit: USDA ARS News; photo by Scott Bauer.. |
 | Worker at pesticide formulating plant ...Credit: National Library of Medicine. | ||
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | A. The federal agency responsible for pesticide evaluation is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). (references) | |
Studies show that spraying of pesticide in wooded areas in the spring and fall can substantially reduce for more than a year the number of adult deer ticks residing there. (references) | ||
The effectiveness of deer feeding stations equipped with pesticide applicators to kill ticks on deer, and other baited devices to kill ticks on rodents, is currently under evaluation. (references) | ||
Business | Proper certification of each pesticide usually takes 2-3 years. (references) | |
China mainly imports pesticide from the U.S., Japan, and the United Kingdom. (references) | ||
Japan and United Kingdom hold 15.2% and 13.4% of total imported pesticide market respectively. (references) | ||
Economic History | West Bank | Unless exporters can reach IS-9002 standards, their product will not be accepted in the EU. Among other factors, this may require integrated pest management, reduction of quantities of pesticide applied and special care in the choice of pesticides used. (references) |
Ukraine | Since agricultural producers cannot grow decent yields of crops without the use of pesticides, it can be projected that the pesticide market (i.e. for herbicides and insecticides) will continue to grow. (references) | |
Ukraine | Cyanamid Overseas Corporation, Dow Elanco, Du Pont, FMC, Monsanto, and Cargill represent American products at the Ukrainian pesticide and agricultural chemical market. (references) | |
Human Rights | Turkey | In January Ercument Ozturk, a human rights activist, alleged that in December 2000 in Eskisehir, two men who said they were policemen kidnaped him, forced him to drink pesticide, and left him for dead in a field. (references) |
Trade | Philippines | The establishment of import protocols is usually a lengthy process as it involves pest and pesticide risk analysis, including ocular inspection of potential source of products by BPI personnel. (references) |
Kenya | All organizations involved in the manufacture, distribution, and sale of agricultural chemicals in Kenya are members of the Pesticide Chemical Association of Kenya (PCAK). (references) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Pesticide" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 92.86% of the time. "Pesticide" is used about 238 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 92.86% | 221 | 20,297 |
| Noun (proper) | 3.78% | 9 | 117,287 |
| Lexical Verb (infinitive) | 2.94% | 7 | 133,076 |
| Lexical Verb (base form) | 0.42% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 238 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "pesticide": granula pesticide ♦ pesticide poisoning ♦ Pesticide Residues ♦ Pesticide Synergists. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "pesticide": pesticide-covered, pesticide-drenched, pesticide-free, pesticide-labelling, pesticide-related, pesticide-resistant, pesticide-soaked. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day | Expression | Frequency per Day |
pesticide | 862 | label pesticide pmra | 13 |
organic pesticide | 90 | ant natural pesticide | 12 |
natural pesticide | 85 | ortho pesticide | 12 |
effects of pesticide | 37 | pesticide poisoning | 11 |
pesticide alternative | 33 | pesticide scorpion | 11 |
pesticide label | 33 | department pesticide regulation | 11 |
homemade pesticide | 29 | pesticide pollution | 11 |
ddt pesticide | 29 | pesticide regulation | 11 |
ant pesticide | 29 | home made pesticide | 10 |
china pesticide | 24 | pesticide sevin | 10 |
pesticide use | 21 | termite pesticide | 10 |
chemical pesticide | 21 | india pdf pesticide tea | 10 |
pesticide picture | 20 | pesticide pregnancy | 10 |
mosquito pesticide | 17 | pesticide safe | 10 |
lawn pesticide | 16 | pesticide law | 10 |
pesticide spider | 15 | pesticide sprayers | 9 |
epa pesticide | 15 | pesticide action network | 9 |
pesticide and environment | 15 | pesticide safety | 9 |
california department pesticide regulation | 14 | pesticide risk | 9 |
arsenate lead pesticide | 14 | information on pesticide | 9 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Language | Translations for "pesticide"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Albanian | pesticid. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Arabic | مبيد الحشرات (insecticide), المبيدات الحشرية. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bulgarian | пестицид. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chinese | 杀虫剂. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Czech | pesticid. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Danish | pesticidrester (pesticide residues), hurtigt nedbrydeligt pesticid (rapidly degrading pesticide), hensyntagen til den tidligere anvendelse af blyarsenat som pesticid har foert til fastsaettelse af tilladte graensevaerdier for blyarsenatrester i landbrugsprodukter (past concern with lead arsenate used as pesticide resulted in establishment of tolerance limits for lead arsenate residues on agricultural products), granuleret pesticid (granulated pesticide). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | problemen die zich in het verleden voordeden bij het gebruik van loodarsenaat als bestrijdingsmiddel, hadden tot gevolg dat tolerantiegrenzen voor loodarsenaat-resten op landbouwgewassen werden vastgelegd (past concern with lead arsenate used as pesticide resulted in establishment of tolerance limits for lead arsenate residues on agricultural products), snel afbreekbaar pesticide (rapidly degrading pesticide), snel afbreekbaar bestrijdingsmiddel (rapidly degrading pesticide), Richtsnoeren voor het voorspellen van de opname via de voeding van residuen van bestrijdingsmiddelen (Guidelines for predicting dietary intake of pesticide residues), residuen van bestrijdingsmiddelen (pesticide residues), licht-geactiveerd pesticide (light activated pesticide), korrelvormig bestrijdingsmiddel (granulated pesticide), granule (granula pesticide, granules), granulaat (beads, granula pesticide, granulate, granule, granules, pellets), breed-spectrum middel (broad-spectrum pesticide, non-selective pesticide), a-selectief middel (broad-spectrum pesticide, non-selective pesticide). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Farsi | ماده ضدافت , کشنده حشره موذی , عامل ضدطاعون . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Finnish | tuholaismyrkky. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | pesticide (pesticidal). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | Pflanzenschutzmittel (plant protective agent), Pestizid. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | εντομοκτόνο (insecticide). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hebrew | מדביר חרקים (insecticide). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | rovarirtó szer, féreg irtószer. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Indonesian | obat pembunuh hama. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | pesticida. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Kanji | 防虫 , 殺虫剤 (insecticide). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Katakana | ぼうちゅう (busyness, gloss, marginal notes, side notes, within a room), さっちゅうざい (insecticide). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Korean | 농약. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | esticidepay amofinar (plague). (various references) pesticid (pest-killer). (various references) пестицид. (various references) pesticid. (various references) pesticida. (various references) insektsmedel (insecticide). (various references) zararlı bitki zehiri, böcek zehiri. (various references) пестицид. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | cidium. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "pesticide": pesticides. (additional references) | |
Words ending with "pesticide": antipesticide. (additional references) | |
| |
"Pesticide" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: pecticide, pectinid, pectinidae, pectinids, pesicide, pesticidc, piscicide, Porticada. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "pesticide" (pronounced pe"stusī'd) |
| 5 | -t u s ī' d | infanticide, insecticide. |
| 4 | -u s ī' d | fratricide, fungicide, genocide, germicide, glucoside, glycoside, herbicide, homicide, prophesied, suicide. |
| 3 | -s ī' d | backside, bedside, blindside, broadside, countryside, curbside, dioxide, dockside, downside, fireside, graveside, harborside, hillside, Ironside, lakeside, mountainside, oxide, peroxide, poolside, ringside, riverside, roadside, seaside, silverside, superoxide, underside, wayside. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "c-d-e-e-i-i-p-s-t" | |
-2 letters: deceits, deistic, deities, depicts, despite, diciest, discept, eidetic, pieties. | |
-3 letters: citied, cities, deceit, deices, depict, edicts, espied, iciest, peised, pieced, pieces, pitied, pities, septic, specie, spiced, spited, stiped, teiids, tidies. | |
-4 letters: cedes, cedis, cepes, cesti, cetes, cited, cites, deeps, deets, deice, deist, dices, diets, disci, dites, edict, edits, epics, pedes, peise, piece, piste. | |
| Words containing the letters "c-d-e-e-i-i-p-s-t" | |
+1 letter: pesticides. | |
+2 letters: descriptive, predacities. | |
+3 letters: prediabetics. | |
+4 letters: antipesticide, depoliticizes, depreciations, descriptively, disrespecting, epidemicities, periodicities, predilections, presanctified, redescription. | |
+5 letters: aperiodicities, appendicitises, decrepitations, dryopithecines, encephalitides, hyperacidities, nondescriptive, pancreatitides, pericarditides, redescriptions. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)50 65 73 74 69 63 69 64 65 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references).--. . ... - .. -.-. .. -.. . |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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| Amazon.com BOOKS: Search for: "pesticide" |
