Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A persistent irritating critic; a nuisance.
  • noun One that acts as a provocative stimulus; a goad.
  • noun Any of various flies, especially a warble fly, botfly, or horsefly, that bite or annoy livestock and other animals.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The popular name of sundry flies which goad or sting domestic animals, as a breeze, breeze-fly, or horse-fly; specifically, a dipterous insect of the family Tabanidæ and suborder Brachycera, representing also a superfamily Hexachætæ.
  • noun A common though erroneous name of sundry flies (bot-flies) of the family Œstridæ and genus Œstrus or Hippoderma, belonging to a different series of the great order Diptera from that of gadflies proper.
  • noun Figuratively, one who is constantly going about; a mischievous or annoying gadabout.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) Any dipterous insect of the genus Oestrus, and allied genera of botflies.
  • noun (Zoöl.) one of several small petrels of the genus Oestrelata.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Any dipterous insect of the family Oestridae, commonly known as botflies.
  • noun A horsefly: any of various species of fly, of the family Tabanidae, noted for buzzing about animals and sucking their blood.
  • noun One who upsets the status quo by posing upsetting or novel questions, or attempts to stimulate innovation by proving an irritant.
  • noun pejorative One who merely irritates without making useful suggestions.
  • noun slang A bloodsucker

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a persistently annoying person
  • noun any of various large flies that annoy livestock

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[gad + fly.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

"fly which bites cattle", from Old Norse gaddr ("spike").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word gadfly.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.