flesh fly
- noun
- /flɛʃ flaɪ/
- Specialized
:
mosca de la carne
- In the flesh fly, Sarcophaga bullata, prolonging larval diapause in the laboratory reduced fertilization success (Denlinger 1981).
- flesh fly maggots
Examples
-
The first wave of insects, mainly the flesh flies, are sometimes called the garbage men.
Fiction book (1996) -
The insects that usually arrive first are the Diptera, in particular the blow flies and the flesh flies.
Blog text (1) -
Flesh flies are on the scene in ten minutes, long before a human nose can detect the slightest hint of a smell.
Fiction book (1996) -
Flesh fly maggots hang from the water's surface and, like vultures, seek out and feed on dead insects.
Academic text (1992) -
Flesh flies are often the first insects to arrive at a dead animal, attracted by the smell of decaying flesh.
-
The larvae of flesh flies can develop quickly, feeding on the tissues of dead animals within hours.
-
During a nature walk, we observed that flesh flies were hovering around a decomposing log.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun–noun compound is directly compositional: 'flesh' (body tissue) modifies 'fly' (insect), indicating a type of fly associated with flesh or feeding on it. This is a common, cross-linguistically transparent compounding pattern, so a B1 learner who knows both constituent words can readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Flesh fly comes from the insect's habit of laying its young on dead animals, where the young eat the animal's flesh. So, the name means a fly whose young feed on dead flesh.
