What is a pesticide? Is it different from an insecticide?
The suffix “-cide” means an act related to killing (from the Latin caedere : “to cut, kill, hack (at), strike”). When attached to a word indicating an animal or plant considered to be pestilent, the combined word is frequently used to indicate a substance used to eliminate the pest in question – Wikipedia. Thus, a pesticide means the killing of a pest or the substance used to perform this function – the target can be an insect (insecticide), rodent (rodenticide), fungus (fungicide), acarid (acaricide), bird (avicide), weed or herb (weedicide or herbicide), bacteria (bactericide), germs (germicide), virus (viricide), microbes (microbicide), and so on. Thus, all insecticides are pesticides, but all pesticides are not necessarily insecticides. Sometimes, insecticides are referred to or grouped according to their use against specific insects (eg. termiticides against termites) or stages of their growth (eg. larvicides against larvae and adulticides against adult stages of mosquitoes).
