face fly
face fly noun: a fly, Musca autumnalis, that resembles the housefly and is a pest of cattle and horses.
Noun
face fly (plural face flies)
- A fly, Musca autumnalis, that resembles the housefly and is a pest of cattle and horses.
- Face flies hibernate in large numbers as unmated adults in buildings, mammal burrows, and in other protected places, whether heated or not.2005, William H. Robinson, Urban Insects and Arachnids: A Handbook of Urban Entomology, page 174
- As its name suggests, the face fly hovers around the cow's face. A cow will not eat if too many face flies are feeding around its eyes. The face fly’s habit of flying from cow to cow makes it an excellent vector of bovine pinkeye, which can lead to blindness.2010, Leland S. Shapiro, Pathology & Parasitology For Veterinary Technicians 2E, Cengage Learning, page 136
Forms of face fly
| plural | face flies |
|---|
Origin of face fly
From face + fly.
Questions about face fly
- What does face fly mean?
- Face fly means a fly, Musca autumnalis, that resembles the housefly and is a pest of cattle and horses.
- What part of speech is face fly?
- Face fly is a noun.
- What is the plural of face fly?
- The plural of face fly is face flies.
Words near face fly in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: face fly (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: “face fly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/face_fly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.