blow fly
noun
Simple meaning
Any of different flies of the family Calliphoridae that lay their eggs in rotting meat, dung, or open wounds.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
blohflySay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈbloʊfˈlaɪ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Any of various flies of the family Calliphoridae that lay their eggs in rotting meat, dung, or open wounds.
Large usually hairy metallic blue or green fly; lays eggs in carrion or dung or wounds
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: Any of various flies of the family Calliphoridae that lay their eggs in rotting meat, dung, or open wounds.
Used this way, blow fly is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in family or home contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Family/home
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Delicacy that is highly dangerous because of a potent nerve poison in ovaries and liver.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.