Word.ws English Dictionary

dorfly

dorfly noun: a biting insect, such as a horse-fly or gad-fly, that attacks livestock.

Noun

dorfly (plural dorflies)

  1. A biting insect, such as a horse-fly or gad-fly, that attacks livestock.
    • This forest was most horribly fertile and copious in dorflies, hornets, and wasps, so that it was a purgatory for the poor mares, asses, and horses.1849, Henry George Bohn, Bohn's Extra Volume: Volume 6, page 152

Forms of dorfly

pluraldorflies

Origin of dorfly

Either from dor (referring to a large, buzzing insect) + fly or a variant of drone fly (horse-fly).

Questions about dorfly

What does dorfly mean?
Dorfly means a biting insect, such as a horse-fly or gad-fly, that attacks livestock.
What part of speech is dorfly?
Dorfly is a noun.
What is the plural of dorfly?
The plural of dorfly is dorflies.

Words near dorfly in the dictionary

  1. Dorff
  2. Dorffs
  3. DORFic
  4. dorfin
  5. dorflies
  6. dorfly
  7. Dorfman
  8. dorfmanite
  9. Dorfmans
  10. dorfs
  11. dorg

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dorfly (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “dorfly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dorfly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.