flies

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of fly.

   Swarms of flies gathered around the spilled fruit in the yard.

   The horses twitched their tails to drive off the flies.

   Note

   The regular plural, formed by changing y to ies, serves nearly every countable sense of the singular: houseflies and midges, dragonflies, the angler's feathered lures, even the chest exercise done with outstretched arms. The swimming stroke is the exception. When butterfly is shortened to fly, its plural is normally spelled flys, so a swimmer does lengths of flys, not flies.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of fly.

   The eagle flies higher than any other bird in the valley.

   An arrow flies straight when the bow is drawn properly.

   Note

   The present-tense form for he, she or it is spelled exactly like the plural noun, and only the sentence tells them apart. After a singular subject it is the verb (the eagle flies). With a or the before it, or a verb after it, it is the noun (flies buzz). It carries every sense of the verb, including the archaic, poetic one of fleeing.

3. 3
   nounplural

   The open area above a stage where scenery and equipment can be hung out of view of the audience.

   Like backstage space turned vertical: a tall loft overhead where sets hang ready to descend on cue.

   During the blackout, the heavy chandelier was lifted silently into the flies.

   The director wanted the forest set flown down from the flies on cue.

   Similarloft

   Note

   A backstage word that exists only in the plural: nobody works in a single fly. Stagehands go up in the flies, and scenery hangs or drops from them on lines and counterweights. The usage is old. Charles Dibdin's Hannah Hewit (1792) has a heroine suckled in the flies, and W. S. Gilbert's dancing girl hangs from them in The Bab Ballads (1869). Context keeps it apart from the plural of the insect.

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