Other forms: midges
A midge is a very small biting fly, the curse of Scottish summers. Bitten by midges, a cloud of midges, midge repellent.
Only the females bite, and they need the blood to make eggs. They are worst in still, damp, overcast weather and a light breeze disperses them, which is why the advice is to camp where the wind reaches. The Old English word is myggs.
1nounmidgeA very small biting fly.
“We couldn't sit outside by the lake because the midges kept biting our arms.”
midge is an insect.
Old English mycg names the insect, from a Germanic root. Mosquito comes from a different, Spanish, road.
Proto-Indo-European
*mū-
Proto-Germanic
*mugjō
Proto-West Germanic
*muggju
Old English
myġġ
Middle English
mydge
English, today
midge
Built from
From Middle English mydge, migge, from Old English myġġ, myċġ (“midge, gnat, mosquito”), from Proto-West Germanic muggju, from Proto-Germanic mugjō, from Proto-Indo-European mū-, mu-, mew- (“fly, midge”). 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 as a a clipping of midget. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA