Glossary
Pest Control Technician Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential pest control technician terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key pest control technician vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in pest control technician training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Bait station
- A container that holds bait for rodents or insects.
- Crack and crevice treatment
- Applying products into small openings where pests hide.
- Drift
- Movement of pesticide away from the target.
- Exclusion
- Sealing openings so pests can’t enter.
- Harborage
- A place where pests hide.
- IPM
- Integrated pest management: prevention, monitoring and targeted control.
- Label
- The legal instructions on a pesticide; the label is the law.
- Monitoring trap
- A sticky trap used to detect pests.
- Mud tubes
- Tunnels termites build to travel to wood.
- PPE
- Personal protective equipment such as gloves and respirators.
- Re-entry interval
- How long people must stay out after an application.
- Residual
- A pesticide that keeps working after application.
- Restricted use pesticide
- A pesticide that only certified applicators may use.
- Rodenticide
- A pesticide that kills rodents.
- Subterranean termites
- Termites that live in soil and build mud tubes.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Pest Control Technician practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Pest Control Technician training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.