a young wingless often wormlike form (as a grub or caterpillar) that hatches from the egg of many insects
the larva looked ugly, but it was destined to hatch into a beautiful butterfly
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Recent Examples of larvaIn a paper published this month in PLOS One, Alaei and her colleagues propose an alternative - employing a suite of superworms, a kind of hefty beetle larva that can capably pick a variety of animal skeletons clean.—
Ari Daniel,
NPR,
17 July 2026 Fireflies go through four life stages – egg, larva, pupa and adult – in a process called complete metamorphosis.—
Janet Loehrke,
USA Today,
5 July 2026 Look in curled leaves that often contain webs with the larva stages — often called worms.—
Tom MacCubbin,
The Orlando Sentinel,
27 June 2026 There are no insecticides that will control the larva of this inconspicuous grayish-brown moth.—
Mary Marlowe Leverette,
The Spruce,
17 June 2026 See All Example Sentences for larva
Recent Examples of Synonyms for larva
nymph
Noun
Circe, the poem’s speaker, instructs the nymphs in a recipe for cooking pork.
—
Bailey Sincox,
The Conversation,
6 Aug. 2026
And the ocean nymphs try out this wonder on more plants, and are delighted that the same thing happens at its touch, and repeat it by scattering the seeds from the plants through the waves.