Flesh-fly

1.  A fly which deposits its eggs (or, if viviparous, its larvæ) in dead flesh; a blow-fly (as Musca vomitoria or Sarcophaga carnaria). Used by Wyclif to render L. cynomyia.

a. 1300.  Cursor M., 5956.

1388.  Wyclif, Ps. lxxvii. 45. He sente a fleisch flie in to hem, and it eet hem.

c. 1440.  Hylton, Scala Perf. (W. de W., 1494), II. xlii. There dare no flesshe flye rest vpon the pottes brynke boylynge on the fyre.

1556.  J. Heywood, Spider & F., v. 9.

1658.  Rowland, Moufet’s Theat. Ins., 934. The Flesh-fly, in regard of his bignesse and bulk of his body, is the biggest of all other, he hath a reddish head, his body full of gray spots, his belly thick, blew, transparent, having two wings, hairy, very greedy of flesh.

1789.  G. White, Selborne, xvii. (1853), 70. Some ladies (ladies you will say of peculiar taste) took a fancy to a toad, which they nourished, summer after summer, for many years, till he grew to a monstrous size, with the maggots which turn to flesh flies.

1861.  Hulme, trans. Moquin-Tandon, II. iv. i. 237. This insect [the Flesh Fly] flies rapidly, and produces a constant buzzing noise; it is ovoviviparous.

  2.  fig. of persons.

1532.  More, Confut. Tindale, Wks. 715/1. All they that persecute any man, what can men cal them by right but Ismaels, and Esaus, and reprobates, and very carnall fleshflyes.

1611.  Speed, Hist. Gt. Brit., VIII. ii. § 2. 378. Those Flesh-flies hauing once tasted the sweet, though often beaten off, would not long bee kept away, but could easily take, or make occasions of fresh attempts, insomuch that after their first footing they continued here their cruelties, rapine, and spoile the space of two hundred and eighteene yeeres, neuer intermitting, till they had got the garland vpon their owne heads.

1782.  Cowper, Progr. Err., 323.

1825.  Macaulay, Milton, Ess. (1854), 15/2. If, in any part of any great example, there be any thing unsound, these flesh-flies detect it with unerring instinct, and dart upon it with a ravenous delight.