Metaphorical turns of phrase can, with time, become tired, dusty, decaying… it gets to be like flogging a dead horse. But what you’re seeing is just the surface; appearances can deceive. Sometimes, with a bit of historical decortication, what may seem a fly-blown idiom can reveal a full-blown case of mistaken identity.
Have you ever paused to consider fly-blown, by the way? We know it means ‘sordid, squalid, rotten’. I had always thought of it as an image of some creature or thing lying out in the elements and beset by insects: a horse corpse, perhaps, with the high prairie wind desiccating it and flies blowing around it.
Well, it’s sort of like that, but sort of not. I’ll tell you now that it’s more disgusting.
In fact, don’t look at the Wiktionary definition page for flyblow if you don’t like being ambushed by a picture of something that may for an instant seem innocuous but, on description, is likely to creep into your dreams. Oh, did you notice I said for flyblow and not for flyblown or fly-blown? Here’s why: fly-blown (with or without the hyphen) means ‘contaminated with flyblows’. That’s right. It doesn’t mean it has flies blowing around it. So what’s a flyblow?
You don’t have to read on if you don’t want.
A flyblow (or fly-blow) is, to use the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition, “The egg deposited by a fly in the flesh of an animal, or the maggot proceeding therefrom.” The Wiktionary page kindly illustrates with a photo of a flyblown human shoulder.
Look, I warned you.
So this is the fly we expect – the insect (which, by the way, is etymologically identical with fly the verb, as in what flies do when they’re not eating, mating, or laying eggs). But it’s a different blow?
Ha, no. It’s the same blow as in the wind. Somehow the blow that is the noun form of the verb blow, as in what wind does, has come also (since the 1600s at least) to have the meaning (per the OED) “The oviposition of flesh-flies or other insects.” The OED quotes from a 1611 translation of the Iliad: “I much fear lest with the blows of flies His brass-inflicted wounds are fil’d.”
It may seem sensible to expect that the eggs are called fly-blows because they come from the blowfly. In fact, it’s the reverse: blowflies are so called by reference to fly-blows – they’re the insects that show up and blow their blows into the carrion. The first known use of blowfly is from more than a century after the first known use of fly-blow. It seems, rather, that the eggs are called blows because the fly seems to blow them into the carrion – or anyway that the maggots that hatch from them a few hours later can be found deep enough to seem blown in.
So fly-blown is not a mistaken identity but rather something that appears to be a mistaken identity. Not full-blown at all. But on the other hand, full-blown…
Well, you tell me what image full-blown gives you. I don’t mean what it usually applies to – a disease, for instance – but where the metaphor seems to come from. Do you picture sails on a ship, with the wind full in them? Such sails can indeed be called full-blown. However, that’s not where our conventional use of full-blown comes from.
Here’s a 1578 quote from the playwright John Lyly, courtesy of the OED: “A Rose is sweeter in the budde then full blowne.” Here’s an 1878 one from Robert Browning: “Flower that’s full-blown tempts the butterfly.” These flowers are not blowing in the wind. They are in full bloom.
And this blow comes from the same root as bloom – and as the modern German word for the verb ‘bloom’: blühen. It’s not related to the other blow (as in the wind), but they’ve been blown together by coincidence, and then by the attraction of resemblance, at least since Middle English.
Any flower can be “full-blown,” too; it doesn’t have to be a rose or other pretty and sweet-smelling one. The lily Helicodiceros muscivorus can be full-blown, and while it’s as pretty to look at as many a lily, its common name will tell you why you won’t be getting it at your florist: it’s the dead horse arum lily. This lily produces an aroma that (I hope) you don’t want in your house, but it’s very attractive to certain kinds of flies.
I think you can see where this is going; no need to flog a dead horse. Yes, a Helicodiceros muscivorus, when full-blown, can be fly-blown. (Oh, and if you know Latin, you may be smiling at muscivorus: it means ‘fly-eating’. But the lily doesn’t actually eat the flies; it only traps them inside overnight so they can fulfill their pollination mission. Then they are free to blow away on the wind once again.)
Sesquiotica 