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midge

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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English

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A midge laying eggs
a gall midge
midges (lures)

Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Middle English mydge, migge, from Old English mygg, myċġ (“midge, gnat”), from Proto-West Germanic *muggju, from Proto-Germanic *mugjō, from Proto-Indo-European *mū- (“fly, midge”), *mu-, *mew-.

The dialectal sense of "short person" was originally figurative, and gave rise to midget (“short person”) via the diminutive suffix -et, which has since become part of standard English with that meaning; this has caused midge to undergo rebracketing as a clipping of midget.

Cognates

The Proto-Indo-European root was also the source of

Pronunciation

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Noun

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midge (plural midges)

  1. Any of various small two-winged flies, for example, from the family Chironomidae or non-biting midges, the family Chaoboridae or phantom midges, and the family Ceratopogonidae or biting midges, all belonging to the order Diptera.
    • 1954, J. R. R. Tolkien, “A Knife in the Dark”, in The Fellowship of the Ring:
      "I am being eaten alive!" cried Pippin. "Midgewater! There are more midges than water!"
    • 2012 January, Douglas Larson, “Runaway Devils Lake”, in American Scientist‎[1], volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 23 May 2012, page 46:
      Devils Lake is where I began my career as a limnologist in 1964, studying the lake’s neotenic salamanders and chironomids, or midge flies. […] The Devils Lake Basin is an endorheic, or closed, basin covering about 9,800 square kilometers in northeastern North Dakota.
  2. (Scotland, Northern England, now chiefly school slang) A small, short or insignificant person.
  3. (fishing) Any bait or lure designed to resemble a midge.


Derived terms

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Translations

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See also

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