valva
noun
valva is a noun meaning “A paired copulatory organ of males in some species of insects that helps the male clasp the female” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-A-L-V-A, and it appears about once in every 49 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of valva is valvae.
What does valva mean?
noun
- 1
A paired copulatory organ of males in some species of insects that helps the male clasp the female.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of valva
- valvae plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is valva?
Valva appears about once in every 49 million words in written English, the 217,360th 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).
Where does valva come from?
Borrowed from Latin valva (“double door, valve”). Doublet of valve.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).