From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishladybirdla‧dy‧bird /ˈleɪdibɜːd $ -bɜːrd/ British English, ladybug /ˈleɪdibʌɡ/ American English noun [countable] HBIa small round beetle (=a type of insect) that is usually red with black spots
Examples from the Corpus
ladybird• No, there was Tumbleweed asleep under an old army greatcoat, a ladybird ambling about on his twitching nose.• A ladybird crawled up a dry stalk, then stepped delicately across to the oiled and battered stock of the rifle.• There is no scriptural basis for this, however, and ladybirds are not mentioned in the Bible.• Majerus, O'Donald, and Weir, for instance, were interested by the genetical control of mate selection in ladybirds.• Artificial selection, for instance, has demonstrated a genetic influence on the mating preferences of ladybirds.• But the World Wide Fund have filmed our ladybird larvae.• Wherever it went it dislodged the tiny blue butterflies in clouds, and scattered the glossy scarlet of the ladybirds.LadybirdLadybird trademark a series of very popular small books for children on all sorts of subjects, usually with hard covers, which are produced in the UK 