flies

Noun

fly (plural flies)

1. Any insect of the order Diptera; characterized by having two wings (except for some wingless species), also called true flies.
   • Devils Lake is where I began my career as a limnologist in 1964, studying the lake’s neotenic salamanders and chironomids, or midge flies. […] The Devils Lake Basin is an endorheic, or closed, basin covering about 9,800 square kilometers in northeastern North Dakota.2012 January, Douglas Larson, “Runaway Devils Lake”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, page 46
2. (non-technical) Especially, any of the insects of the family Muscidae, such as the common housefly (other families of Diptera include mosquitoes and midges).
   • When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose. And the queerer the cure for those ailings the bigger the attraction. A place like the Right Livers' Rest was bound to draw freaks, same as molasses draws flies.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter V, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
3. Those or any similar but not closely related insect, such as a dragonfly, butterfly, or gallfly.
4. A lightweight fishing lure resembling an insect.
   • I went on trying for fish along the western bank down the river, but only small trout rose at my flies, and a score was the total catch.1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 152
5. A chest exercise performed by moving extended arms from the sides to in front of the chest. (also flye)
6. The butterfly stroke (plural is normally flys).

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