cleg

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points: 7
Words With Friends: 10
Letters: 4

Pronunciation

/klɛɡ/

Definition of cleg

2 senses · 1 part of speech · etymology included

noun

(England, Scotland, dialectal)a blood-sucking fly of the family Tabanidae: gadfly, horsefly, deer fly, blind-fly, tabanid

“Sir Christopher Pack did cleave like a clegg, and was very angry he could not be heard ad infinitum.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”

See all 2 definitions

noun

(England, Scotland, dialectal)a blood-sucking fly of the family Tabanidae: gadfly, horsefly, deer fly, blind-fly, tabanid

“Sir Christopher Pack did cleave like a clegg, and was very angry he could not be heard ad infinitum.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
(dialectal)A light breeze.

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

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