Etymology

mayfly

M3A1Y4F4L1Y4

Today it means: Any of the many fragile insects of the order Ephemeroptera that develop in fresh water and live very briefly as winged adults. Full definition →

English fly ← Middle English May ← Old French mai
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European*méǵh₂sder.?
  2. LatinMaia
  3. LatinMaius
  4. Old Frenchmai
  5. Middle EnglishMay
  6. EnglishMay
  7. Englishfly
  8. English todaymayfly

From May (“fifth month”) + fly (“flying insect”). Compare Saterland Frisian Moaifljooge (“blowfly”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.