housefly
Americannoun
-
houseflies
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of housefly
late Middle English word dating back to 1400–50; see origin at house, fly 1
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.
See Examples For:
People can be forgiving, our attention spans rival the life cycle of a housefly — one of the plot’s premises — move on.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 14, 2023
We’ve been wandering the preserve for more than an hour, and all we’ve seen are a few small wasps, a couple of ants, a housefly and lots of honey bees, which is a bad sign.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 15, 2022
But hypervigilance has its limits, especially against a microscopic pathogen that can infiltrate a barn on the leg of a single housefly.
From New York Times ● Feb. 24, 2022
If you see a dead housefly on a windowsill surrounded by a ghostly halo of tiny white spores, it’s a death trap.
From Science Magazine ● Nov. 1, 2021
Scientists at the Department of Agriculture laboratory in Orlando, Florida, are now sterilizing the housefly in laboratory experiments and even in some field trials, using chemicals incorporated in suitable foods.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
On Tuesday, forensic entomologist Amoret Whitaker said the conditions in the teenager's bedroom were "optimal" for a colonisation of houseflies.
From BBC ● Jan. 24, 2023
There are far fewer moths and hoverflies than there were 125 years ago; now, flowers are being swarmed with muscoid flies, which are a superfamily including houseflies.
From Salon ● Jan. 7, 2023
During Taylor’s “Gossamer Gallants,” shiny green female bugs entice unwitting male houseflies.
From New York Times ● May 5, 2022
As wings shrink, air friction overwhelms flight power—that’s why dragonflies soar as houseflies sputter.
From Scientific American ● Mar. 21, 2022
On the other hand, resistance among houseflies and body lice has now developed on a global scale.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
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.
