Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Plural form of
firefly .
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Watching fireflies is a good answer, but water pistol fights?
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The joy of fireflies is that they are temporal and again, visually “unstable” as they dance high and low in the twilight.
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In response to my piece about Web 2.0 "fireflies" -
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English girls don't know about fireflies, which is about all Slothrop knows for sure about English girls.
Gravity's Rainbow Pynchon, Thomas 1978
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The fireflies were our regular evening companions.
African Camp Fires Stewart Edward White 1909
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Next, they engineered the stem cells within the capsules to produce luciferase, the same bioluminescent chemical produced by fireflies, which is highly visible under bioluminescence imaging.
PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories 2009
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"fireflies" -- because they light up a room, capture your attention, leave you longing for more, etc.
ClickZ News 2009
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"fireflies" -- because they light up a room, capture your attention, leave you longing for more, etc.
ClickZ News Blog 2009
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"fireflies" -- because they light up a room, capture your attention, leave you longing for more, etc.
ClickZ News Blog 2009
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So it is, right now, with the suddenly vanishing animal kingdom, mostly small, such as fireflies, and bees, and bats, and all sorts of amphibians.
oroboros commented on the word fireflies
The fireflies, twinkling among the leaves,
make the stars wonder.
--Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies
July 14, 2008
frogapplause commented on the word fireflies
Where I'm from (Missouri), "fireflies" are called "lightning bugs".
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. --Mark Twain
July 14, 2008
oroboros commented on the word fireflies
I'm wondering if ol' Rabindranath gave that any thought?
July 14, 2008
frogapplause commented on the word fireflies
"Fireflies" sounds more poetic to me. I wonder what the word for "fireflies" is in Bengali.
July 14, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word fireflies
I grew up (in Pennsylvania) calling them lightning bugs also. And I love that Twain quote too. :)
July 14, 2008
reesetee commented on the word fireflies
Ditto--PA and lightning bugs. :-)
July 22, 2008
oroboros commented on the word fireflies
"It is dusk in the tropical rainforest of Papua, New Guinea. As the shrieking of parrots and parakeets fades and the tree kangaroos settle in for a long night, fireflies by the million are taking to the air and lighting it up like tiny flickering stars. For a while the fireflies' erratic flashing will animate the darkening air with a gentle, luminescent chaos. But as evening turns to night, the chaos will give way to one of nature's most bizarre displays. Fireflies, first in pairs, then in groups of three, ten, a hundred, and a thousand, will begin to pulse in near-perfect synchrony. By midnight, entire trees and clumps of trees will be flashing on and off with the crisp clarity of neon signs.
'Imagine a tree thirty-five to forty feet high,' an eyewitness once wrote.'...apparently with a firefly on every leaf and all the fireflies flashing in perfect unison at the rate of about three times in two seconds, the tree being in complete darkness between flashes...Imagine a tenth of a mile of river front with an unbroken line of mangrove trees with fireflies on every leaf flashing in synchronism, the insects on the trees at the ends of the line acting in perfect unison with those between. Then if one's imagination is sufficiently vivid, he may form some conception of this amazing spectacle.'
It is more than a spectacle. It is also a scientific enigma."
--NEXUS: SMALL WORLDS and the Groundbreaking THEORY OF NETWORKS by Mark Buchanan, p. 48
edit: there are only a handful of firefly species that can do this...
September 13, 2008