horse fly
noun
Simple meaning
Any of several medium to large flies, of the family Tabanidae, that suck the blood of mammals.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
hawrsflySay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈhɔɹsfˈlaɪ
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 several medium to large flies, of the family Tabanidae, that suck the blood of mammals (not to be confused with Stomoxys calcitrans, the stable fly, or dog fly).
Large swift fly the female of which sucks blood of various animals
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: Any of several medium to large flies, of the family Tabanidae, that suck the blood of mammals (not to be confused with Stomoxys calcitrans, the stable fly, or dog fly).
Used this way, horse fly is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in family or home contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Family/home
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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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.