How to Use boll weevil in a Sentence

boll weevil

noun
  • The pheromones lured boll weevils into traps where they could be sprayed with pesticides.
    — Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian, 31 May 2017
  • For example, the boll weevil was once the main worldwide threat to cotton.
    — Andrew Moseman, Discover Magazine, 14 May 2010
  • For the boll weevil was the major pest and adversary of cotton farmers all over.
    — Arkansas Online, 19 Mar. 2026
  • But more than a century ago, a small creature – the boll weevil – nearly destroyed this town.
    — CBS News, 18 Sep. 2022
  • In the Lone Star State, boll weevil traps with pheromones are set up around fields and along roadsides.
    — Mary Beth Gahan, Washington Post, 7 Oct. 2022
  • Adding to these burdens were the poor soil and periodic ravages of the pestilential boll weevil.
    — Trevor Paulhus, Smithsonian, 19 Sep. 2019
  • Nobody ever thought about how life would change on farms once mankind figured out a way to eradicate--that was the word used--the little boll weevil.
    — Arkansas Online, 19 Mar. 2026
  • Well, the city’s latest boll weevil statue is right there outside the McDonald’s.
    — Ike Morgan | [email protected], al, 5 Apr. 2022
  • Enterprise has a long history of celebrating the boll weevil.
    — Leada Gore | [email protected], al, 4 Apr. 2022
  • The boll weevil, wrecker of cotton, enters the state, having migrated from Mexico.
    — al, 28 Nov. 2019
  • Gruene began to declined by the 1920s after boll weevil beetles infested local crops.
    — Timothy Fanning, San Antonio Express-News, 25 Jan. 2022
  • Cotton farming declined as fertility decreased and the boll weevil infested crops.
    — Alia Malik, ajc, 10 Feb. 2022
  • The boll weevil decimated cotton crops in the South, leading to the closure of the exchange in 1920.
    — Jim Halley, AJC.com, 27 Jan. 2026
  • The family has survived droughts, tornadoes and the boll weevil during the century and a half that successive generations have been farming.
    — James Estrin, New York Times, 6 Nov. 2019
  • White arsenic was a key ingredient for manufacturing boll weevil pesticides.
    — Roger Showley, San Diego Union-Tribune, 28 June 2019
  • White arsenic was a key ingredient for manufacturing boll weevil pesticides.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 2 Oct. 2023
  • Malathion is used widely by farmers, gardeners, and to help eradicate the invasive cotton boll weevil, according to the EPA.
    — Thomas Goodwin Smith, Baltimore Sun, 20 July 2024
  • In 1919, city leaders commissioned a marble figure from an Italian sculptor to commemorate the change, later adding a large boll weevil atop the statue.
    — Leada Gore | [email protected], al, 4 Apr. 2022
  • In the years that followed, hundreds of Black workers would make the journey from the South, fleeing Jim Crow laws, the boll weevil, devastating floods and racial violence.
    — Michael Grabell, ProPublica, 21 Dec. 2020
  • Meanwhile, Southern farmers were encouraged to cultivate peanut crops after the boll weevil decimated cotton production.
    — Amanda Erickson, Washington Post, 9 Mar. 2018
  • By 1916, the boll weevil infestation had engulfed the entire state, leading to the decimation of nearly two-thirds of Alabama’s cotton crops.
    — Dana Shavin, Travel + Leisure, 24 Jan. 2024
  • In the 1970s-1980s, all the agricultural talk in the Mississippi Delta was whether the boll weevil would be terrible or just awful this coming fall.
    — Arkansas Online, 19 Mar. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'boll weevil.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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