Weeds in Tagalog and Other Farm Words: An English Tagalog Glossary

Weeds in Tagalog and grass in Tagalog

Damo means both grass and weed. Tagalog.com and Wiktionary give both meanings, so the sentence tells you which one. For example, damo sa palayan is weeds in the rice field, while damuhan is a grassy place or a lawn. So weeds in Tagalog and grass in Tagalog are the same word, and only the setting tells them apart.

Farmer handouts use the same word. They call weeding pagdadamo, and they call herbicide pamatay damo or herbisidyo. If you want the weeds themselves, with names like mutha and gabi gabi, see our guide to common weeds in the Philippines.

Bugs in Tagalog, pest in Tagalog and maggots in Tagalog

Bugs in Tagalog are insekto or kulisap. Insekto comes from Spanish, while kulisap is older and often means a tiny insect. So pamatay kulisap is insecticide. Pest in Tagalog is peste, and it covers insects, rats, snails and anything else that damages the crop.

Maggots in Tagalog are uod. In fact, uod covers every soft larva: maggots, grubs, worms and caterpillars. That is why farmers call the fall armyworm an uod too. A hairy, itchy caterpillar has its own name, higad. For the insects that attack palay, see our list of rice insects.

Mite in Tagalog: what hanip really means

The usual answer for mite in Tagalog is hanip. But Wiktionary defines hanip as the chicken louse or chicken flea, the tiny pest that crawls in the feathers of hens. Tagalog.com lists another hanip too, which means walking quietly to catch something.

So a hanip insect, strictly, lives on poultry. Even so, farmers carry the word into the field for tiny crop pests. For mites on vegetables and fruit trees, no dictionary we checked gives a separate common Tagalog word, and many technicians just say mites. Our page on hanip, mites and aphids shows how to tell these tiny pests apart.

Diseased in Tagalog and mildew in Tagalog

Diseased in Tagalog is may sakit, often written maysakit. Sakit means disease or illness, so halamang may sakit is a diseased plant.

Mildew in Tagalog is amag. The same word means mold, and maamag means moldy. Some word lists online give agiw for mildew, but that is wrong. Tagalog.com defines agiw as cobwebs or dirty residue in the corners of a house, not a fungus on leaves. For the leaf and fruit diseases farmers fight most, see anthracnose and our guide to fungicides.

Fertilizer in Tagalog and pesticide in Tagalog

Fertilizer in Tagalog is abono or pataba. Both are common in farm talk. Abono also has an older meaning, a payment made in advance, but in the field it means fertilizer. So when a farmer asks how many sacks of abono per hectare, read our guide to urea fertilizer or the fertilizer calculation page.

Pesticide in Tagalog is pestisidyo. Tagalog.com places insecticide, herbicide and fungicide all under that one word. Before you buy any of them, check the product's registration with the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority.

Palay in English, palayan in English and corn in Tagalog

Palay in English is the rice plant, or rice grain still in its husk. In trade and statistics it is called unhusked rice or paddy. Students who search for the English ng palay usually need exactly those words. Once milled, palay becomes bigas, and once cooked it becomes kanin. So palay at bigas means the grain before and after the mill, and each has its own price. In the same way, ani ng palay in English is the rice harvest, as our page on ani meaning shows. Our page on palay explains each stage of the crop.

Palayan in English is a rice field or rice paddy. The dike around each paddy is the pilapil, and the grain head is the uhay. For a real example, read about the palayan of Nueva Ecija. Corn in Tagalog is mais, the same word for the plant, the ear and the grain.

Rice bug, black rice bug and their local names

Two bugs share many names, so be careful. Atangya is the Tagalog name and dangaw the Ilocano name of the rice bug, the slender bug that sucks milky grains. The rice black bug, sometimes written black rice bug, is itim na atangya. Syngenta Philippines adds tiyangaw for both.

Dictionaries mix them up further. Wiktionary lists atangya and alitangya for the rice black bug itself. Tayangaw appears in the SIL Masbatenyo dictionary as a pest of rice plants, glossed as rice weevil, with the example damo sin tayangaw an akon humay, or my rice plants are full of tayangaw. Because names change from town to town, trust the shape of the insect more than the name. Our pages on the rice bug and the rice black bug show both.

Alibangbang insect: a butterfly, not a pest name

The alibangbang insect is a butterfly. Wiktionary gives that meaning in Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Hanunoo and Higaonon, while in Naga Bikol the word can mean a dragonfly. In Tagalog dictionaries, though, alibangbang is a tree, Bauhinia, whose leaves look like butterfly wings. The everyday Tagalog word for butterfly is paruparo.

So if a farmer from the Visayas reports alibangbang in the field, ask to see it. Adult butterflies rarely harm crops, but their caterpillars, the uod, can strip leaves.

Ask in Tagalog or English with Anee

Farm talk mixes both languages, and so does anee.io. Anee, the smart farm technician, answers in Tagalog or English. So you can type may uod sa mais ko or there are worms in my corn, and she answers in the language you used. Before answering, Anee reads your cropping schedule, the growth stage of each lot and the weather. It can also look at a photo of the pest or the sick leaf.

Questions about farm words in Tagalog