Noun

(flies)

(zoology) Any insect of the order Diptera; characterized by having two wings, also called true flies.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-01

, author=Douglas Larson, volume=100, issue=1, page=46, magazine=(American Scientist) , title= Runaway Devils Lake , passage=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.}}

(non-technical) Especially , any of the insects of the family Muscidae, such as the common housefly (other families of Diptera include mosquitoes and midges).

* , chapter=5

, title= Mr. Pratt's Patients , passage=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 .}}

Any similar, but unrelated insect such as dragonfly or butterfly.

(fishing) A lightweight fishing lure resembling an insect.

(weightlifting) A chest exercise performed by moving extended arms from the sides to in front of the chest. (also flye)

(obsolete) A witch's familiar.

* Ben Jonson

a trifling fly , none of your great familiars

(obsolete) A parasite.

(Massinger)

Noun

(flies)

(obsolete) The action of flying; flight.

An act of flying.

(baseball) A fly ball.

A type of small, fast carriage (sometimes pluralised flys).

* 1897 , (Bram Stoker), (Dracula) , Folio Society 2008, p. 124:

As we left the house in my fly , which had been waiting, Van Helsing said:— ‘Tonight I can sleep in peace [...].’

* , chapter=16

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=“[…] She takes the whole thing with desperate seriousness. But the others are all easy and jovial—thinking about the good fare that is soon to be eaten, about the hired fly , about anything.”}}

*1924 , (Ford Madox Ford), Some Do Not…'', Penguin 2012 (''Parade's End ), p. 54:

*:And, driving back in the fly , Macmaster said to himself that you couldn't call Mrs. Duchemin ordinary, at least.

A piece of canvas that covers the opening at the front of a tent.

A strip of material hiding the zipper, buttons etc. at the front of a pair of trousers, pants, underpants, bootees, etc.

The free edge of a flag.

The horizontal length of a flag.

Butterfly, a form of swimming.

(weightlifting) An exercise that involves wide opening and closing of the arms perpendicular to the shoulders.

The part of a vane pointing the direction from which the wind blows.

(nautical) That part of a compass on which the points are marked; the compass card.

(Totten)

Two or more vanes set on a revolving axis, to act as a fanner, or to equalize or impede the motion of machinery by the resistance of the air, as in the striking part of a clock.

A heavy wheel, or cross arms with weights at the ends on a revolving axis, to regulate or equalize the motion of machinery by means of its inertia, where the power communicated, or the resistance to be overcome, is variable, as in the steam engine or the coining press. See fly wheel.

In a knitting machine, the piece hinged to the needle, which holds the engaged loop in position while the needle is penetrating another loop; a latch.

(Knight)

The pair of arms revolving around the bobbin, in a spinning wheel or spinning frame, to twist the yarn.

(weaving) A shuttle driven through the shed by a blow or jerk.

(Knight)

(printing, historical) The person who took the printed sheets from the press.

(printing, historical) A vibrating frame with fingers, attached to a power printing press for doing the same work.

One of the upper screens of a stage in a theatre.