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Webster 1913 Edition

(kăn-thăr′ĭ-dēz)

Noun.

pl.

See

See also: Cantharides

cantharides pl ‎(plural only)

(entomology) Cantharides, a genus of coleopterous insects, formerly also taken to include aphids.
- 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essayes, London: Edward Blount, OCLC 946730821, II.5:
  The Cantharides have some part in them, which by a contrarietie of nature serveth as an antidot or counterpoison against their poison […].
Spanish fly, a vesicant extracted from the beetle Lytta vesicatoria (alternatively classified Cantharis vesicatoria), popularly held to have aphrodisiac properties.
- 1926, Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist, Ch.26:
  I can make the most subtle sauces yield up their secret--whether it be white arsenic, rosalgar, mercury sublimate, or cantharides.
- 1964, Anthony Burgess, Nothing Like The Sun:
  Speaking her name, it was as if he spake pure cantharides. ‘Quick,’ she panted. ‘There is time before they are all about. Again.’
- 1992, Will Self, Cock and Bull:
  It’s lucky that Carol had taken the precaution of obtaining some cantharides; without them the evening might have been a dead loss.
- 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage 2007, p. 612:
  Basically Louis's drug dealer and pimp, Richelieu, known for opium recipes to fit all occasions, is also credited with the introduction into France of the cantharides, or Spanish fly.

cantharidēs