bar fly
- noun
- /bɑr flaɪ/
- Slang
:
frecuentador de bares
- Due to his love for socializing, Mark is known as a bar fly among his friends.
Examples
-
- They're the worst bar flies in Denver.
-
He has become a bar fly, spending every evening at the local pub with friends.
-
His life was a basically about drinking and hanging around with with what we call bar flies and shooting pool.
-
And it was the disease that made him become a bar fly in D.C. a few weeks ago, meeting with different women and having his affairs.
Blog text (11) -
As a bar fly, she is familiar with all the bartenders in town and often shares stories from her late nights out.
Synonyms
4
8.2
A person who spends a lot of time drinking and talking in bars
A person who often goes to bars and clubs at night
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The sense 'a person who hangs around bars' depends on a metaphorical/derogatory use of 'fly' (like an insect that lingers) rather than a straightforward compositional meaning from 'bar' + the given adjectival sense of 'fly' ('fashionable'). A B1 learner who knows 'bar' and ordinary senses of 'fly' might sometimes infer a meaning like 'someone who frequents bars', but the mapping is indirect and contingent on knowing the idiomatic/metaphorical use, so it is not fully transparent.
Etymology
Bar fly probably comes from the picture of a small fly that always sits on the bar. People used this image for a regular customer who stays at the counter, so bar fly means 'a person who spends a lot of time drinking at bars'.