fly-paper

English

Noun

fly-paper (countable and uncountable, plural fly-papers)

1. Alternative form of flypaper
   • 1896, The Maybrick Case, a Statement of the Case as a Whole:

     : Mrs. Maybrick purchased these fly-papers from two chemists' shops, where she was well known.

   • 2001, Mark Twain, “The Supremacy of the House Fly”, in Microfilm Edition of Mark Tawin's Literary Manuscripts Available in the Mark Twain Pages, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley:

     Fly-paper has accomplished nothing. The percentage of flies that get hitched to it is but one in the hundred, and the other ninety-nine assemble as at a circus and enjoy the.performance.

   • 2012, Roald Dahl, Roald Dahl: Three Tales of Magic and Mischief, page 306:

     We get rid of flies with fly-spray and by hanging up fly-paper.

Verb

fly-paper (third-person singular simple present fly-papers, present participle fly-papering, simple past and past participle fly-papered)

1. Alternative form of flypaper
   • 1976, Stephen Longstreet, God and Sarah Pedlock, page 356:

     Be firm, Woody, don't get fly-papered into staying on here.

   • 1983, Auren Uris, John J. Tarrant, Career stages: surmounting the crises of working life, page 47:

     For people who fear getting fly-papered by a first job, the Tremayne case makes it clear that the first job can be a stepping-stone to bigger and better things.

   • 2009, Iain M. Suthers, David Rissik, Plankton:

     Once Pleurobrachia senses it has 'fly-papered' a copepod onto a tentacle, it spins its body to rapidly wrap its tentacles around the body, somehow wiping the copepod across the single body opening to the central gut.