caterpillar

n. a small, long creature with many legs that eats leaves and later becomes a butterfly or moth.

n. the larval stage of a butterfly or moth, typically having a segmented body and multiple pairs of legs.

“The green caterpillar spent all afternoon eating the leaves in the garden.”

“Biologists observed the caterpillar as it entered the pupal stage, eventually emerging as a monarch butterfly after several weeks.”

n. a heavy vehicle, like a tractor, that moves on metal tracks instead of wheels.

n. a vehicle equipped with caterpillar tracks, designed for movement over rough or soft terrain.

“The construction crew used a heavy caterpillar to move the piles of dirt.”

“The heavy-duty caterpillar navigated the muddy excavation site with ease, where standard wheeled vehicles would have surely become stuck.”

n. a special kind of tree shape in math where all the points are close to a central line.

n. a tree in which all nodes are within distance one of a central path.

“The professor explained how to identify a caterpillar in the network diagram.”

“In graph theory, a caterpillar is a tree in which all vertices are within distance one of a central path graph.”

Technical

n. a person who takes too much money or resources from others.

n. a rapacious or extortionate person who preys upon the community.

“The old stories described the greedy tax collector as a caterpillar of the commonwealth.”

“The political pamphlet from the seventeenth century denounced the corrupt officials as caterpillars who consumed the wealth of the honest citizenry.”

Archaic

v. to move your body slowly by pulling your back up and then stretching forward.

v. to move in a manner resembling a caterpillar, characterized by rhythmic contraction and extension of the body.

“The toddler tried to caterpillar across the rug to reach his toy.”

“The injured climber had to caterpillar slowly toward the edge of the clearing to signal for the rescue helicopter.”