Kuklase (Kuklane)

Alternative name for Sipelga, of the Formica genus. Also an archaic name for ant, like its variants kusilane and kusikuklane, suggesting the smell of pee that antheaps often have (kusi = urine), ditto in the English name of yore for ant, ‘pismire’. While I’m waffling, another earlier English name for ant is ‘emmet’ from the Old English æmette, and, along with modern German Ameise, derived from the hypothetical *ai-, off or away, + *mait-, to cut or hew. German etymologists are still arguing whether it means that the ant body is segmented, or that they hew (read ‘bite’) off pieces of plant. Part of an insect street-name group. See also Parmu.