horsefly
horse·fly/ˈhoɹsˌflaɪ/noun
horsefly is a noun 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…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled H-O-R-S-E-F-L-Y and has 2 syllables (horse·fly), and it appears about once in every 23 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of horsefly is horseflies.
What does horsefly mean?
noun
- 1
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).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce horsefly?
- US /ˈhoɹsˌflaɪ/
Horsefly has 2 syllables, split horse·fly in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-horsefly.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of horsefly
- horseflies plural
- horse-fly
- horse fly
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is horsefly?
Horsefly appears about once in every 23 million words in written English, the 145,125th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Horsefly in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense fly of the family Tabanidae:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does horsefly come from?
From Middle English horse fliȝe, equivalent to horse + fly.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).