daddy-longlegs
Americannoun
-
an informal name for a crane fly
-
an informal name for harvestman
Etymology
Origin of daddy-longlegs
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
At night they spent the time rescuing Daddy-longlegs from their candles and rushlights.
From Literature
A warm May was likely to drive an earlier emergence of craneflies, or daddy-longlegs, a key chick food.
From BBC
While Saracens also have some sharp English backs, none are quite like Jonny May, the Cherry and White wing with the hurdler's stride and the elusiveness of a flying daddy-longlegs.
From The Guardian
Miss Crossfield was so thin, her movements and gestures were so indeterminate, and her arms wandered so much upon the air, that indoors she suggested a daddy-longlegs on a window-pane, and out of doors a daddy-longlegs floating across an upland pasture in autumn.
From Project Gutenberg
And then, just when it really was beginning to seem worth while to be alive again, Cousin Edith's hand alighted uncertainly like a daddy-longlegs on Jasmine's arm and jigged up and down as a prelude to whispering in what, were that insect vocal, would certainly have been the voice of a daddy-longlegs: "Do you think we can communicate with the dead?"
From Project Gutenberg
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
