English

Alternative forms

• Emmett

Proper noun

Emmet

1. A surname​.
2. A city in Arkansas
3. A village in Nebraska
4. One of two towns in Wisconsin

English

Noun

emmet ‎(plural emmets)

1. (dialectal or archaic) An ant.
   • 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, New York Review of Books, 2001, p.47:

     He told him that he saw a vast multitude and a promiscuous, their habitations like molehills, the men as emmets […].

   • 1789, William Blake, Songs of Innocence, A Dream:

     Once a dream did weave a shade / O'er my angel-guarded bed / That an emmet lost its way / Where on grass methought I lay.

   • 1814, William Wordsworth, The Excursion, IV.430:

     [A benignity that] to the emmet gives / Her foresight, and intelligence that makes / The tiny creatures strong by social league.

   • 1993, Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford:

     We are scurrying emmets or pismires with our sad little comedies.

2. (Cornwall, pejorative) A tourist.

See also

• grockle