Trending: ‘fly’

Lookups spiked 3,800% on October 7, 2020

Why are people looking up fly?

Entomology met etymology as a fly with unknown political affiliation landed on the head of Vice President Mike Pence during the the Vice Presidential Debate on October 7, 2020. It did not go unnoticed.

2 minutes and 3 seconds — that's how long a local TV news reporter from California clocked the fly’s screen time on Mike Pence’s head during the #VPDebate.https://t.co/1n1qZcBvXU
— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 8, 2020

What does fly mean?

The noun fly is defined as "a small insect that has two wings." It's a broad term that encompasses many different insects.

Where does fly come from?

Fly as a verb and a noun is as old as the English language, going back to the Old English first recorded in the Middle Ages. There have always been flies.

Trend Watch is a data-driven report on words people are looking up at much higher search rates than normal. While most trends can be traced back to the news or popular culture, our focus is on the lookup data rather than the events themselves.