[f. FLY sb.1 + BLOW sb.2]
1. The egg deposited by a fly in the flesh of an animal, or the maggot proceeding therefrom. Also collect. Rarely the action of depositing the egg.
1556. J. Heywood, Spider & F., xliv. 229. This flie hath blown fliblowse in mine eare a pecke.
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, II. 467/1. This kind of Maggot, in the Winter drieth up into a brown husk, or shell, and in the Summer following, turns into a black Fly, which bloweth Meat in the shambles, from whence proceeds little long Eggs, called Fly blowes: which turns to Maggot again.
1713. Warder, True Amazons (ed. 2), 18. These Eggs, which are produced by the Bees, and in their time do become Bees, are exceeding white, something bigger than the common Fly-blow.
1757. Dyer, Fleece, I. 578.
| Shear them the fourth or fifth return of morn, | |
| Lest touch of busy fly-blows wound their skin. |
1825. On Bull Baiting, I. Houlston Tracts, I. xxvii. 8. Its poor wounds were all full of fly-blows.
fig. a. 1680. Butler, Rem. (1759), I. 424–5. He is made, like an Insect, by equivocal Generation, and produced out of Dung and the Flyblows of the Rabble, whose Votes, right or wrong, are sufficient to enable him to vote in the same Way.
attrib. 1606. [see FLY-BLOWN 1. fig. 1602].
1856. Mrs. Browning, Aur. Leigh, IX. 378.
| I am a woman of repute; | |
| No fly-blow gossip ever specked my life. |
2. = BY-BLOW 3.
1875. Ouida, Signa, I. viii. 140. No doubt that little fly-blow is his own.
