Midge
name, noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Any of various small two-winged flies, for example, from the family Chironomidae or non-biting midges, the family Chaoboridae or phantom midges, and the family Ceratopogonidae or biting midges, all belonging to the order Diptera.
""I am being eaten alive!" cried Pippin. "Midgewater! There are more midges than water!""
- 2 minute two-winged mosquito-like fly lacking biting mouthparts; appear in dancing swarms especially near water wordnet
- 3 A small, short or insignificant person. Northern-England, Scotland
- 4 Any bait or lure designed to resemble a midge.
- 1 A female given name of rare usage, variant of Madge.
Example
More examples"I don't know whether I got this bite from a midge or a mosquito."
Etymology
From Middle English mydge, migge, from Old English mygg, myċġ (“midge, gnat”), from Proto-West Germanic *muggju, from Proto-Germanic *mugjō, from Proto-Indo-European *mū- (“fly, midge”), *mu-, *mew-. The dialectal sense of "short person" was originally figurative, and gave rise to midget (“short person”) via the diminutive suffix -et, which has since become part of standard English with that meaning; this has caused midge to undergo rebracketing as a clipping of midget. Cognates * Scots mige (“midge”) * Saterland Frisian Määge (“gnat, mosquito”) * West Frisian mich (“fly, mosquito”) * West Flemish meezje (“midge, mosquito”) * Dutch mug (“midge, gnat, mosquito”) * German Low German Mügge (“midge, gnat, mosquito”) * German Mücke (“midge, gnat, mosquito”) * Swedish mygg, mygga (“midge, gnat, mosquito”) * Icelandic mý (“midge, gnat, fly”) The Proto-Indo-European root was also the source of * Latin musca * Ancient Greek μυῖα (muîa) * Russian му́ха (múxa) * Latvian muša * Czech muchnička * Albanian mizë * Armenian մուն (mun)
Related phrases
More for "midge"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.