housefly
noun
housefly is a noun meaning “Any fly regularly found in human dwellings” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled H-O-U-S-E-F-L-Y, and it appears about once in every 16 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of housefly is houseflies.
What does housefly mean?
noun
- 1
Any fly regularly found in human dwellings.
- 2
The common housefly, Musca domestica, that frequents most homes and spreads some diseases.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce housefly?
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-housefly.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of housefly
- houseflies plural
- house fly
- house-fly
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is housefly?
Housefly appears about once in every 16 million words in written English, the 119,826th 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).
Housefly in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense fly:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | mouche domestique |
| German | Stubenfliege |
| Portuguese | mosca doméstica |
| Spanish | mosca doméstica, mosca común |
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 housefly come from?
From house + fly. Cognate with Dutch huisvlieg (“housefly”), Danish husflue (“housefly”), Swedish husfluga (“housefly”), Faroese húsfluga (“housefly”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).