maggot

«maggot» in Mova's school dictionary: The soft, pale, legless young form (larva) of a fly… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a maggot, maggots)

meaning for a pupil

1) The soft, pale, legless young form (larva) of a fly, which hatches from an egg and feeds on rotting food or dead animals. tree →

2) (old-fashioned, insult) A rude name for a worthless person. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science lessons maggots are part of a fly's life cycle: egg, larva (maggot), pupa, adult fly. They clean up nature by eating rotting things. Anglers use them as bait; doctors sometimes use clean maggots to clean wounds. Phrases: «crawling with maggots».

examples

• The rubbish bin was crawling with maggots in the hot weather. tree →
• A maggot turns into a pupa and then into a fly. tree →
• Grandad uses maggots as bait when he goes fishing. tree →
• Maggots help break down dead animals. tree →
• Doctors sometimes use special clean maggots to clean wounds. tree →
• We learnt about the life cycle of a fly: egg, maggot, pupa, fly. tree →
• The old apple had a maggot inside. tree →
• The peasants knocked them down and flung them into the fire, not allowing so much as a single maggot to creep away! tree →

note

Countable; plural «maggots». A maggot is a larva, not a worm — a common mistake. Caterpillars are the larvae of butterflies and moths; maggots are the larvae of flies.

In the corpora

• How much less man, that is a worm! and the son of man, that is a maggot!

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «maggot» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.