means A slender, winged stinging insect of the order Hymenoptera, often striped yellow and black, known for its painful sting and short temper.

from From Old English wæsp (also wæps), going back to a Proto-Germanic root that gives German Wespe and Dutch wesp. It's likely a cousin of Latin vespa, and the whole family is often traced to an ancient root meaning 'to weave' — a nod to the wasp's papery, woven nest. Curiously, the older English wæps shows the 's' and 'p' had swapped places at some point, a metathesis that settled into the modern 'wasp.'