Etymology

Noun

1. An ant
   • 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, New York Review of Books, 2001, p. 47:

     He told him that he saw a vast multitude and a promiscuous, their habitations like molehills, the men as emmets [...].

   • 1789, William Blake, Songs of Innocence:

     Once a dream did weave a shade / O'er my angel-guarded bed / That an emmet lost its way / Where on grass methought I lay.

   • 1993, Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford:

     We are scurrying emmets or pismires with our sad little comedies.

2. A tourist