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 larvaThe Government Highline Canal, where the first larva was found, provides irrigation water to more than 23,000 acres of farmland in the Grand Valley.—Elise Schmelzer, The Denver Post, 18 July 2024 In the game, one player is the ant and wasp, the other player is the beetle larva and adult.—Lesley Evans Ogden, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 Jan. 2024 All but one hatch early and cruise the host’s body, killing competing parasites so that the last larva to hatch has a habitat all to itself.—Carl Zimmer, Discover Magazine, 11 Nov. 2019 In his metaphor, the larva represented the data that had gone into training modern neural nets; the dragonfly stood for the agile A.I. that had been created from it.—Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker, 13 Nov. 2023 See all Example Sentences for larva
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