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Maggot
Definitions
- 1 Alternative form of maggoted (“drunk; intoxicated”). Australia, alt-of, alternative, colloquial
- 1 A soft, legless larva of a fly or other dipteran insect, that often eats decomposing organic matter.
- 2 the larva of the housefly and blowfly commonly found in decaying organic matter wordnet
- 3 A worthless person. derogatory, slang
"Drop and give me fifty, maggot."
- 4 A whimsy or fancy. archaic, dialectal
"Are you not mad, my friend? What time o' th' moon is't? / Have not you maggots in your brain?"
- 5 A fan of the American metal band Slipknot. slang
"(We) We are the new diabolic (We) We are the bitter bucolic If I have to give my life, you can have it (We) We are the pulse of the maggots"
- 1 To rid (an animal) of maggots. transitive
"In the summer I had to get the sheep penned twice a day to maggot them and I needed a good dog."
Etymology
From Middle English magot, magat, maked, probably a metathetic alteration of maddock, maðek (“worm", "maggot”), originally a diminutive form of a base represented by Old English maþa (Scots mathe), from Proto-West Germanic *maþō, from Proto-Germanic *maþô, from the Proto-Indo-European root *mat, which was used in insect names, equivalent to made + -ock. Near-cognates include Dutch made, German Made and Swedish mask, Icelandic maðkur (“worm, grub, maggot”). The use of maggot to mean a fanciful or whimsical thing derives from the folk belief that a whimsical or crotchety person had maggots in their brain.
From Middle English magot, magat, maked, probably a metathetic alteration of maddock, maðek (“worm", "maggot”), originally a diminutive form of a base represented by Old English maþa (Scots mathe), from Proto-West Germanic *maþō, from Proto-Germanic *maþô, from the Proto-Indo-European root *mat, which was used in insect names, equivalent to made + -ock. Near-cognates include Dutch made, German Made and Swedish mask, Icelandic maðkur (“worm, grub, maggot”). The use of maggot to mean a fanciful or whimsical thing derives from the folk belief that a whimsical or crotchety person had maggots in their brain.
From Middle English magot, magat, maked, probably a metathetic alteration of maddock, maðek (“worm", "maggot”), originally a diminutive form of a base represented by Old English maþa (Scots mathe), from Proto-West Germanic *maþō, from Proto-Germanic *maþô, from the Proto-Indo-European root *mat, which was used in insect names, equivalent to made + -ock. Near-cognates include Dutch made, German Made and Swedish mask, Icelandic maðkur (“worm, grub, maggot”). The use of maggot to mean a fanciful or whimsical thing derives from the folk belief that a whimsical or crotchety person had maggots in their brain.
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