Definition of fly

"fly" in the noun sense

1. fly

two-winged insects characterized by active flight

2. tent-fly, rainfly, fly sheet, fly, tent flap

flap consisting of a piece of canvas that can be drawn back to provide entrance to a tent

3. fly, fly front

an opening in a garment that is closed by a zipper or by buttons concealed under a fold of cloth

4. fly, fly ball

baseball) a hit that flies up in the air

5. fly

fisherman's lure consisting of a fishhook decorated to look like an insect

"fly" in the verb sense

1. fly, wing

travel through the air be airborne

"Man cannot fly"

2. fly

move quickly or suddenly

"He flew about the place"

3. fly, aviate, pilot

operate an airplane

"The pilot flew to Cuba"

4. fly

transport by aeroplane

"We fly flowers from the Caribbean to North America"

5. fly

cause to fly or float

"fly a kite"

6. fly

be dispersed or disseminated

"Rumors and accusations are flying"

7. fly

change quickly from one emotional state to another

"fly into a rage"

8. fly, fell, vanish

pass away rapidly

"Time flies like an arrow"

"Time fleeing beneath him"

9. fly

travel in an airplane

"she is flying to Cincinnati tonight"

"Are we driving or flying?"

10. fly

display in the air or cause to float

"fly a kite"

"All nations fly their flags in front of the U.N."

11. flee, fly, take flight

run away quickly

"He threw down his gun and fled"

12. fly

travel over (an area of land or sea) in an aircraft

"Lindbergh was the first to fly the Atlantic"

13. fly

hit a fly

14. vanish, fly, vaporize

decrease rapidly and disappear

"the money vanished in las Vegas"

"all my stock assets have vaporized"

"fly" in the adjective sense

1. fly

British informal) not to be deceived or hoodwinked

Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)

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Quotations for fly

Pleasant hours fly fast. [ Proverb ]

To fly with waxed wings. [ Proverb ]

The blind eat many a fly. [ Proverb ]

If you must fly, fly well. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Almost never killed a fly. [ German Proverb ]

Even a fly hath its spleen. [ Proverb ]

It would make even a fly laugh. [ Proverb ]

The hours fly along in a circle. [ Manilius ]

Into a mouth shut flies fly not. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

A word spoke is an arrow let fly. [ Proverb ]

A fly is as untamable as a hyena. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

For those that fly may fight again.
Which he can never do that's slain. [ Butler ]

Follow a shadow, it still flies you.
Seem to fly it, it will pursue:
So court a mistress, she denies you;
Let her alone, she will court you.
Say are not women truly then,
Styled but the shadows of us men? [ Ben Jonson ]

Hail mildly, pleasing solitude.
Companion of the wise and good,
But from whose holy, piercing eye,
The herds of fools and villains fly;
Oh! how I love with thee to walk,
And listen to thy whispered talk,
Which innocence and truth imparts,
And meets the most obdurate hearts. [ Thomson ]

Benign restorer of the soul!
Who ever fly'st to bring relief.
When first we feel the sure control,
Of love or pity, joy or grief. [ Rogers ]

You must lose a fly to catch a trout. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Make knowledge circle with the winds;
But let her herald, Reverence, fly
Before her to whatever sky
Bear seed of men and growth of minds. [ Alfred Tennyson ]

The world recedes; it disappears!
Heaven opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?
O Death! where is thy sting? [ Pope ]

That is as likely as to see a hog fly. [ Proverb ]

Fly the pleasure that bites to-morrow. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

He would fain fly, but he wants wings. [ Italian Proverb ]

He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly. [ Butler ]

To contemplation's sober eye.
Such is the race of man;
And they that creep, and they that fly.
Shall end where they began.
Alike the busy and the gay,
But flutter through life's little day. [ Gray ]

Come one, come all! this rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I. [ Scott ]

True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven;
It is not fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy.
The silver link, the silken tie.
Which heart to heart, and mind to mind,
In body and in soul can bind. [ Walter Scott ]

Brutes find out where their talents lie;
A bear will not attempt to fly. [ Jonathan Swift ]

He would gladly fly, but wants feathers. [ Proverb ]

To fly upon plunder and lose the battle. [ Proverb ]

Do for yourself (fly with your own wings). [ French Proverb ]

Roasted pigeons don't fly through the air. [ Dutch Proverb ]

Great honours and avarice fly one another. [ Proverb ]

When great spirits clash, sparks fly about. [ French Proverb ]

Thou canst not fly high with borrowed wings. [ Proverb ]

Riches like insects when concealed they lie,
Wait but for wings, and in their season fly. [ Pope ]

If the partridge had the woodcock's thigh,
It would be the best bird that ever did fly. [ Proverb ]

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;
Words, without thoughts, never to heaven go. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

Lightning and thunder (heaven's artillery)
As harbingers before th' Almighty fly:
Those but proclaim His style, and disappear;
The stiller sounds succeed, and God is there. [ John Dryden ]

Where, where for shelter shall the guilty fly
When consternation turns the good man pale? [ Young ]

They are those winged messengers that can fly
From the Antarctic to the Arctic sky;
The heralds and swift harbingers that move
From east to west on embassies of love. [ Howell ]

Pigeons are taken when crows fly at pleasure. [ Proverb ]

But now the clouds in airy tumult fly;
The sun, emerging, opes an azure sky;
A fresher green the smiling leaves display,
And glittering as they tremble, cheer the day. [ Parnell ]

Do pigeons fly ready-roasted into one's mouth? [ German Proverb ]

O bees, sweet bees! I said; that nearest field
Is shining white with fragrant immortelles,
Fly swiftly there and drain those honey wells. [ Helen Hunt ]

For wealth, without contentment, climbs a hill,
To feel those tempests which fly over ditches. [ Herbert ]

Make a silver bridge for your enemy to fly over. [ Proverb ]

Our words have wings, but fly not where we would. [ George Eliot ]

Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must quit,
Or what is worse, be left by it?
Why dost thou load thyself when thou 'rt to fly.
Oh, man! ordained to die?
Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high,
Thou who art under ground to lie?
Thou sow'st and plantest, but no fruit must see.
For death, alas! is reaping thee. [ Cowley ]

If we be enemies to ourselves whither shall we fly? [ Proverb ]

Youth should watch joys and shoot them as they fly. [ Dryden ]

Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. [ Job v. 7 ]

I'll make the fur fly about the ears of the old cur. [ Butler ]

He that has feathered his nest may fly when he will. [ Proverb ]

Error's monstrous shapes from earth are driven
They fade, they fly - but truth survives the flight. [ Bryant ]

God gives birds their food, but they must fly for it. [ Dutch Proverb ]

They dispute about an egg, and let the hens fly away. [ German Proverb ]

He hath conquered well that hath made his enemies fly. [ Proverb ]

Events of all sorts creep or fly exactly as God pleases. [ William Cowper ]

You may gape long enough ere a bird fly into your mouth. [ Proverb ]

What a dust have I raised! quoth the fly upon the coach. [ Proverb ]

Rich men feel misfortunes that fly over poor men's heads. [ Proverb ]

The mind alone is in fault which can never fly from itself. [ Horace ]

When the heart is a fire, some sparks will fly out of the mouth. [ Proverb ]

However wickedness outstrips men, it has no wings to fly from God. [ Shakespeare ]

The fly that plays too long in the candle, singes her wings at last. [ Proverb ]

You shall never beat the fly from the candle, though she burn for it. [ Proverb ]

As birds are made to fly and rivers to run, so the soul to follow duty. [ Ramayana ]

Eagles we see fly alone; and they are but sheep which always herd together. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Ignorance is the curse of God, knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. [ William Shakespeare ]

Ask a kite for a feather, and she'll say, she has but just enough to fly with. [ Proverb ]

Reason! I have lost it; and, were it to be returned to me, I would fly from it! [ A. de Musset ]

A lie has no legs, and cannot stand; but it has wings, and can fly far and wide. [ Warburton ]

And when obedient nature knows his will, a fly, a grapestone, or a hair can kill. [ Prior ]

If you be false to both beasts and birds, you must with the bat, fly only by night. [ Proverb ]

Words do sometimes fly from the tongue that the heart did neither hatch nor harbour. [ Feltham ]

'Tis long ere time can mitigate your grief; To wisdom fly, she quickly brings relief. [ Grotius ]

Envy is like a fly that passes all a body's sounder parts, and dwells upon the sores. [ Chapman ]

To wear a horn and not know it, will do one no more harm than to eat a fly and not see it. [ Proverb ]

Fly from the crowd, and be to virtue true. Content with what thou hast, though it be small. [ Chaucer ]

There is no evil which we cannot face or fly from but the consciousness of duty disregarded. [ Daniel Webster ]

The death of your first wife made such an impression in your heart, that all the rest fly through. [ Proverb ]

He that has too little wants wings to fly, he that has too much is encumbered with his large tail. [ Proverb ]

There is no evil that we cannot either face or fly from, but the consciousness of duty disregarded. [ Daniel Webster ]

It is vain for the coward to fly; death follows close behind; it is by defying it that the brave escape. [ Voltaire ]

Labor not to be rich; * * * for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven. [ Bible ]

He that blows the coals in quarrels he has nothing to do with, has no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face. [ Ben. Franklin ]

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

A fly is a very light burden; but if it were perpetually to return and settle on one's nose, it might weary us of our very lives. [ Fredrika Bremer ]

Martha says the interesting thing about fly fishing is that it's two lives connected by a thin strand. Come on, Martha. Grow up. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Public opinion is the atmosphere of Society, without which the forces of the individual would collapse, and all the institutions of society fly into atoms. [ W. R. Alger ]

Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds; they ever fly by twilight; they are to be repressed, or at the least well guarded, for they cloud the mind. [ Bacon ]

Make the doors upon a woman's wit, and it will out at the casement; shut that, and 'twill out at the keyhole; stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney. [ William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act IV. Sc.1 ]

I look upon paradoxes as the impotent efforts of men who, not having capacity to draw attention and celebrity from good sense, fly to eccentricities to make themselves noted. [ Horace Walpole ]

When men neglect God, they neglect their own safety; they procure their own ruin; they fly from their own happiness; they pursue their own misery, and make haste to be undone. [ J. Mair ]

Too bad you can't just grab a tree by the very tiptop and bend it clear over the ground and then let her fly, because I bet you'd be amazed at all the stuff that comes flying out. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

The female heart is just like a new india-rubber shoe; you may pull and pull at it till it stretches out a yard long; and then let go, and it will fly right back to its old shape. [ Judge Haliburton ]

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. [ Bible ]

Close thine ear against him that shall open his mouth secretly against another; if thou receive not his words, they fly back and wound the reporter; if thou receive them, they flee forward and wound the receiver. [ Quarles ]

I know not whether there exists such a thing as a coin stamped with a pair of pinions; but I wish this were the device which monarchs put upon their dollars and ducats, to show that riches make to themselves wings, and fly away. [ Gotthold ]

There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousand truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away. [ Beecher ]

Abridge your hopes in proportion to the shortness of the span of human life; for while we converse, the hours, as if envious of our pleasure, fly away. Enjoy, therefore, the present time, and trust not too much to what tomorrow may produce. [ Horace ]

The eye speaks with an eloquence and truthfulness surpassing speech. It is the window out of which the winged thoughts often fly unwittingly. It is the tiny magic mirror on whose crystal surface the moods of feeling fitfully play, like the sunlight and shadow on a still stream. [ Tuckerman ]

If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, called New York. Cosmopolitan they call it, you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky stuff. Little old New York's good enough for us - that's what they sing. [ O. Henry, A Tempered Wind ]

It is sufficient to have a simple heart in order to escape the harshness of the age, in order not to fly from the unfortunate; but it is to have some understanding of the imperishable law, to seek them in the forgetfulness against which they dare not complain, to prefer them in their ruin, to admire them in their struggles. [ Senancour ]

The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pully is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel. [ Pascal ]

There is a world of science necessary in choosing books. I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Health is certainly more valuable than money; because it is by health that money is procured; but thousands and millions are of small avail to alleviate the protracted tortures of the gout, to repair the broken organs of sense, or resuscitate the powers of digestion. Poverty is, indeed, an evil from which we naturally fly, but let us not run from one enemy to another, nor take shelter in the arms of sickness. [ Johnson ]

There are many persons of combative tendencies, who read for ammunition, and dig out of the Bible iron for balls. They read, and they find nitre and charcoal and sulphur for powder. They read, and they find cannon. They read, and they make portholes and embrasures. And if a man does not believe as they do, they look upon him as an enemy, and let fly the Bible at him to demolish him. So men turn the word of God into a vast arsenal, filled with all manner of weapons, offensive and defensive. [ H. W. Beecher ]

fly in Scrabble®

The word fly is playable in Scrabble®, no blanks required.

Scrabble® Letter Score: 9

Highest Scoring Scrabble® Plays In The Letters fly:

FLY
(27)
FLY
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FLY
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All Scrabble® Plays For The Word fly

FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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The 14 Highest Scoring Scrabble® Plays For Words Using The Letters In fly

FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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fly in Words With Friends™

The word fly is playable in Words With Friends™, no blanks required.

Words With Friends™ Letter Score: 9

Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Plays In The Letters fly:

FLY
(27)
FLY
(27)
FLY
(27)
 

All Words With Friends™ Plays For The Word fly

FLY
(27)
FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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The 15 Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Plays Using The Letters In fly

FLY
(27)
FLY
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FLY
(27)
FLY
(23)
FLY
(18)
FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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FLY
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Words within the letters of fly

3 letter words in fly (1 word)

fly + 1 blank (1 word)

Word Growth involving fly

Shorter words in fly

(No shorter words found)

Longer words containing fly

alderfly

aloofly

barfly

beetfly

blackfly

blowfly

bluffly

bobfly

botfly

briefly

bushfly

butterfly butterflyfish butterflyfishes

butterfly butterflying

butterfly butterflylike

caddisfly

catchfly

chalcidfly

chiefly

cornfly

cranefly

damselfly

dayfly

deafly

deerfly deerflys

dobsonfly

dragonfly

dropfly

firefly

fishfly

flyable unflyable

flyaway flyaways

flyback flybacks

flyball flyballs

flybane flybanes

flybelt flybelts

flyblown

flyboat flyboats

flybook flybooks

flyby flybys

flycatcher flycatchers

flycatching

flyeater flyeaters

flyer flyers highflyers

flyer highflyer highflyers

flyfish butterflyfish butterflyfishes

flyfish flyfished

flyfish flyfisher flyfishers

flyfish flyfishes butterflyfishes

flyfish flyfishing

flying butterflying

flying highflying

flying kiteflying

flying nonflying

flying outflying

flying sailflying

flyleaf

flyless

flymaker flymakers

flyoff flyoffs

flyover flyovers

flypaper flypapers

flypast flypasts

flypitch flypitched

flypitch flypitcher flypitchers

flypitch flypitches

flypitch flypitching

flyproof

flyscreen flyscreens

flysheet flysheets

flyspeck flyspecked

flyspeck flyspecker flyspeckers

flyspeck flyspecking

flyspeck flyspecks

flyspray flysprays

flystrike flystrikes

flyswat flyswats

flyswat flyswatted

flyswat flyswatter flyswatters

flyswat flyswatting

flytrap flytraps

flyway flyways

flyweight flyweights

flywheel flywheels

flywhisk flywhisks

fritfly

fruitfly

gadfly

gallfly

glowfly

grayfly

greenfly

greyfly

horsefly

housefly

ladyfly

lanternfly

mayfly

medfly

outfly goutfly

outfly outflying

overfly hoverfly

purfly

ruffly gruffly

sandfly

sawfly

scorpionfly

shadfly

shoofly

snakefly

sniffly

snuffly

spongefly

spongillafly

stiffly overstiffly

stonefly

whitefly