Noun: maggot
| Singular | maggot |
| Plural | maggots |
Sample Sentences
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Drop and give me fifty, maggot.
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"Maggot!" said Catweazle angrily. "Sit thee down!" [1971, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 32:]
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Are you not mad, my friend? What time o' th' moon is't? / Have not you maggots in your brain? [1620, John Fletcher, Women Pleased, III.iv:]
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‘I am ashamed of him! how can he think of humouring you in such maggots!’ [1778, Frances Burney, Journals & Letters, Penguin, published 2001, page 100:]
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[…] If you draw, Sir, there's one prospect up the river, by the mills—upon my conscience—but you don't draw?'
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No answer.
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'A little, Sir, maybe? Just for a maggot, I'll wager—like my good lady, Mrs. Toole.' [1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard:]
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Scotland Yard have two maggots which crop up whenever anything happens to a young woman. Either it’s White Slavery or Dope Dens—sometimes both. [1927, Dorothy Sayers, Unnatural Death:]
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(We) We are the new diabolic
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(We) We are the bitter bucolic
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If I have to give my life, you can have it
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(We) We are the pulse of the maggots [2004, “Pulse of the Maggots”, performed by Slipknot:]
Nouns inflected like maggot
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. From Middle English magot, magat, maked, probably a metathetic alteration of maddock, maðek (“worm", "maggot”), originally a diminutive form of a base represented by Old English maþa (Scots mathe), from Proto-West Germanic *maþō, from Proto-Germanic *maþô, from the Proto-Indo-European root *mat, which was used in insect names, equivalent to made + -ock. Near-cognates include Dutch made, German Made and Swedish mask, Icelandic maðkur (“worm, grub, maggot”).
2. The use of maggot to mean a fanciful or whimsical thing derives from the folk belief that a whimsical or crotchety person had maggots in their brain. See: Middle English Nouns '
magot', Old English Nouns '
maþa', Dutch Nouns '
made', German Nouns '
Made', Swedish Nouns '
mask', Icelandic Nouns '
maðkur'.