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PlainSpell

chigger

/ˈt͡ʃɪɡɚ/noun

chigger is a noun meaning “A chigoe (Tunga penetrans), a kind of flea found in tropical climates” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-H-I-G-G-E-R, and it appears about once in every 28 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of chigger is chiggers.

What does chigger mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A chigoe (Tunga penetrans), a kind of flea found in tropical climates.

  2. 2

    A harvest mite (Trombiculidae spp.), a very small, red mite endemic to the Midwestern and Southeastern US, the infestation of which causes intense itching.

  3. 3

    USderogatoryoffensiveslangAn East Asian person who behaves in ways similar to a stereotypical urban African American.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce chigger?

  • /ˈt͡ʃɪɡɚ/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-au-chigger.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of chigger

  • chiggers plural
  • chigga

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is chigger?

Chigger appears about once in every 28 million words in written English, the 161,690th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Chigger in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchpuce chique (chigoe flea), aoutat (harvest mite)
GermanSandfloh (chigoe flea)
Portuguesebicho-de-pé, tunga, zunga, bitacaia, matacanha, nígua (chigoe flea)
Spanishnigua, pique, sote (chigoe flea)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does chigger come from?

From chigoe, likely from a Cariban language term such as Kari'na siko (“chigoe”) (early recorded variant chico), from Proto-Cariban *tikô.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).