Noun

(houseflies)

Any fly regularly found in human dwellings.

# The common housefly, Musca domestica , that frequents most homes and spreads some diseases.

#* 1990 , D. C. Kaslow, S. Welburn, 16: Insect-transmitted pathogens in the insect midgut'', M. Lehane, P. Billingsley (editors), ''Biology of the Insect Midgut , page 454,

Of the three potential means (carriage on the body and legs, regurgitation and defecation) by which houseflies' can transmit pathogens, one involves passage through the gut. During passage through the ' housefly , pathogens may replicate within the gut.

#* 2004 , R. Jurenka, Insect Pheromone Biosynthesis'', Stefan Schulz (editor), ''The Chemistry of Pheromones and Other Semiochemicals I , page 123,

In the housefly , M. domestica , sex pheromone production is correlated with egg development.

#* 2011 , Ross Piper, Pests: A Guide to the World's Most Maligned, Yet Misunderstood Creatures , page 102,

Houseflies are known to carry at least 100 different pathogens and they are vectors for at least 65 of these.

Noun

(en noun)

Any of very many animals (either hermaphroditic or nonhermaphroditic), of the class Gastropoda , having a coiled shell.

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=7 citation , passage=‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared. […]’}}

(informal, by extension) A slow person; a sluggard.

(engineering) A spiral cam, or a flat piece of metal of spirally curved outline, used for giving motion to, or changing the position of, another part, as the hammer tail of a striking clock.

(military, historical) A tortoise or testudo; a movable roof or shed to protect besiegers.

* Vegetius (in translation)

They had also all manner of gynes [engines]

The pod of the snail clover.