cleg

English

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

Alternative forms

• clegg, gleg

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^[1], 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^[2], 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

• (blood-sucking fly of family Tabanidae): blind-fly (Central Africa), deer fly (genus Chrysops), gadfly, horsefly, tabanid

Further reading

• “cleg”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• Pokorny, Julius (1959) “1144”, in Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch [Indo-European Etymological Dictionary] (in German), volume 3, Bern, München: Francke Verlag, page 1144

Anagrams

• CGEL