cleg

English
a Haematopota species, one of many so-called types of clegs

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle English clege, from Old Norse kleggi, possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *glōgʰ-s (“point”); compare with Norwegian Nynorsk klegg, Ancient Greek γλωχίς (glōkhís, “barb”).

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /klɛɡ/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɛɡ
  • Homophone: Clegg

Noun

cleg (plural clegs)

  1. (now dialectal) A light breeze.
  2. (Scotland, England dialect) A blood-sucking fly of the family Tabanidae; a gadfly, a horsefly.
    • 1657, Thomas Burton, Diary, section I:
      Sir Christopher Pack did cleave like a clegg, and was very angry he could not be heard ad infinitum.
    • 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 39:
      Now that was in summer, the time of fleas and glegs and golochs in the fields, when stirks would start up from a drowsy cud-chewing to a wild a feckless racing, the glegs biting through hair and hide to the skin below the tail-rump.
    • 1998, V. K. Riabitsev, One Season in the Taiga‎, page 138:
      The clegs continue to swarm all around. I wonder how many there are. […] Remaining seated on the block, I seize clegs out of the surrounding air at random, and with scissors cut out a tiny triangle from the rear edge of each one's right wing before releasing it.
    • 2007, John T. Wright, An Evacuee's Story: A North Yorkshire Family in Wartime‎, page 361:
      Cattle were grazing languidly on the lush grass and flicking their tails to keep away the clegs that constantly plagued them and, having recently suffered a nasty bite from one, I was wary of them myself.
    • 2011, Denis Brook, Phil Hinchliffe, North to the Cape: A Trek from Fort William to Cape Wrath, page 49:
      Whilst the swarms which surround you are annoying, they do not bite. It is the midges, clegs and ticks you should be on the lookout for.

Synonyms

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