Cicada comes directly from Latin cicāda, the Roman word for the large buzzing insects that filled Mediterranean summers with their characteristic song. The deeper etymology of the Latin word is uncertain — it may be onomatopoeic (imitating the insect's call) or may derive from a pre-Latin Mediterranean substrate language. The Greek equivalent tettix (τέττιξ), also likely onomatopoeic, is used in some biological contexts (the genus Tettigonia).
The cicada held deep symbolic significance in ancient Mediterranean cultures. In Greece, cicadas were associated with immortality and the divine gift of music. The myth of Tithonus — the mortal lover of Eos (Dawn), who was granted eternal life but not eternal youth and ultimately withered into a cicada — connected the insect to themes of transformation and the bittersweet nature of immortality. Athenian aristocrats wore golden cicada brooches (tettiges) in their hair as emblems of autochthony (being born from the
The periodical cicadas of eastern North America (genus Magicicada) represent one of the most remarkable phenomena in entomology. These insects spend either 13 or 17 years underground as nymphs, feeding on root sap, before emerging en masse as adults for a brief period of mating and egg-laying. The use of prime-number life cycles is believed to be an evolutionary strategy: prime numbers have no common factors with shorter cycles, so predators cannot evolve synchronized population booms to exploit cicada emergences. A predator with a 5-year cycle, for example, would only coincide with a 17-year cicada every 85 years.
The mass emergence of periodical cicadas — billions of insects emerging simultaneously in a given area — is a spectacle of density-dependent survival strategy called 'predator satiation.' The cicadas emerge in such overwhelming numbers that predators cannot possibly consume them all, ensuring that enough adults survive to reproduce. The noise of a male chorus can exceed 90 decibels — comparable to a lawnmower — produced by specialized vibrating structures called tymbals on the abdomen.