From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishgnatgnat /næt/ noun [countable] HBIa small flying insect that bites
Examples from the Corpus
gnat• In five hours she'd be marking Miguel O'Brien - a gnat trying to curb an elephant.• And, little by little, the utterly unprecedented thought began buzzing around my cortex, like a gnat in a jar.• Vanessa could shoot the eye out of a gnat at fifty paces.• Milk, sticky and sour on her dress, attracted every small flying thing from gnats to grasshoppers.• The last two weeks had been damp and little gnats thickened the air like a living dust.• The heat and the gnats were the next burden.• As was suggested in argument, that would indeed be to swallow the elephant and strain at the gnat.Origin gnat Old English gnætt 