larva

IPA: ɫˈɑrvʌ

An early stage of growth for some insects and amphibians, in which after hatching from their egg, insects are wingless and resemble a caterpillar or grub, and amphibians lack limbs and resemble fish.
An animal in the aforementioned stage.
A form of a recently born or hatched animal that is quite different from its adult stage.
(figurative) A preliminary stage of someone or something, before it has fully matured, especially a time of growth rather than one of performance.

Examples of "larva" in Sentences

The musca pendula lives in stagnant water; the larva is suspended by
Here it is necessary to disabuse the reader's mind of the prevalent belief that the terms larva, pupa and imago are fixed and absolute.
The toxin resides in the thorax section of the larva, which is crushed and mixed with tree gum and painted onto the shaft of the arrow point.
The word larva referring to the newly hatched form of insects before they undergo metamorphosis comes from the Latin word lārva, meaning “evil spirit, demon, devil.”
The word larva is first recorded in English in its scientific sense in 1768, although it had been used in its “spirit” sense in 1651 in a way that foreshadowed the usage by Linnaeus.
The larva of the Meloidæ, before reaching the nymphal state, passes through four forms, which I call the _primary larva_, the _secondary larva_, the _pseudochrysalis_ and the _tertiary larva_.
But the mystery of species eludes us, and we have made no progress beyond what we already have long known, namely, that a kitty is born because its mother was a she-cat that mated with a tom, and that a fly emerges as a fly larva from a fly egg. [
We have seen that even in them the term "complete" is a relative and not absolute expression, and that the terms larva and pupa are convenient designations for states varying in duration, and assumed to fulfil certain ends of existence, and even then dependent on length of seasons, variation in climate, and even on the locality.