dragonfly

Etymology

It is a compound from English dragon + fly.^[2][3][4][5] The OED explains the name by the popular belief that the insect was connected with evil or did harm, and notes similar folk names in other European languages: German Drachenfliege and Drachenhure (both late 18th century), and Spanish caballito del diablo and Romanian calul dracului, both literally "devil's horse".^[2] An older English name for the insect was adderbolt, from 1483,^[2][3] probably for its likeness to a winged dragon or for its supposed venom, as the OED suggests, or for its shape, as Etymonline says.^[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The insect: 1626, in F. Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum, which suggests that "the delicate coloured dragonflies may have likewise some corrosive quality".^[2][5][6] Etymonline and Dictionary.com date the word to the 1620s.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

Johnson (1755) defined the dragonfly as "a fierce stinging fly", quoting the same passage of Bacon;^[5] Merriam-Webster Unabridged, by contrast, stresses that the insects are harmless and among the most useful, since they eat mosquitoes and other pests.^[6] American English has many regional names for it: darning needle and devil's darning needle in the North and West, snake feeder in the Midland, snake doctor in the South Midland and South, and mosquito hawk or skeeter hawk in the South, especially along the coast.^[4][3][7] Collins and Dictionary.com distinguish the dragonfly proper from the damselfly, which folds its wings at rest.^[8][4]

Timeline

• 1626 – the insect, in Bacon.^[2][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A fast-flying, predatory insect with a long slender body, large eyes and two pairs of iridescent wings held outspread at rest, whose larvae live in water.^[8][6][4]
2. More widely, any insect of the same order, including the damselfly.^[8]

Related words

• dragon
• fly
• damselfly
• adderbolt
• darning needle

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
6. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
8. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins