midge

• midgie, midgy, midgey (Northern England, Scotland)
• minge (US, archaic, dialectal)

From Middle English mydge, migge, from Old English mygg, myċġ (“midge, gnat”), from Proto-West Germanic *muggju, from Proto-Germanic *mugjō, from Proto-Indo-European *mū- (“fly, midge”), *mu-, *mew-.

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 rebracketing as a clipping of midget.

• enPR: mĭj, IPA^(key): /mɪd͡ʒ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪdʒ

midge (plural midges)

1. Any of various small two-winged flies, for example, from the family Chironomidae or non-biting midges, the family Chaoboridae or phantom midges, and the family Ceratopogonidae or biting midges, all belonging to the order Diptera.
   • 1954, J. R. R. Tolkien, “A Knife in the Dark”, in The Fellowship of the Ring:

     "I am being eaten alive!" cried Pippin. "Midgewater! There are more midges than water!"

   • 2012 January, Douglas Larson, “Runaway Devils Lake”, in American Scientist‎^[1], volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 23 May 2012, page 46:

     Devils Lake is where I began my career as a limnologist in 1964, studying the lake’s neotenic salamanders and chironomids, or midge flies. […] The Devils Lake Basin is an endorheic, or closed, basin covering about 9,800 square kilometers in northeastern North Dakota.

2. (Scotland, Northern England, now chiefly school slang) A small, short or insignificant person.
3. (fishing) Any bait or lure designed to resemble a midge.

• gnat