pesticide
pes·ti·cide/ˈpɛstɪˌsaɪd/noun
pesticide is a noun meaning “Anything, especially a synthetic substance but also any substance (e.g. sulfur), or virus, bacterium, or other organism, which kills or suppresses…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-E-S-T-I-C-I-D-E and has 3 syllables (pes·ti·cide), and it appears 1.8 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of pesticide is pesticides.
What does pesticide mean?
noun
- 1
Anything, especially a synthetic substance but also any substance (e.g. sulfur), or virus, bacterium, or other organism, which kills or suppresses the activities of pests.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce pesticide?
- UK /ˈpɛstɪsaɪd/
- UK /ˈpɛstəsaɪd/
- US /ˈpɛstɪˌsaɪd/
Pesticide has 3 syllables, split pes·ti·cide in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-pesticide.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Wodencafe-pesticide.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of pesticide
- pesticides plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is pesticide?
Pesticide appears 1.8 times per million words in written English, the 20,906th 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).
Pesticide in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense substance used to kill or repress the activities of pests:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | pesticide |
| German | Pestizid |
| Portuguese | pesticida |
| Spanish | pesticida, plaguicida |
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 pesticide come from?
From pest + -i- + -cide.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).