A whim; crotchet; maggot; conceit.

In about ten days this egg develops into a fully grown larva, in other words a white maggot with a black head.

For as long as I can get Tolambu's History of Mustard, Frederigo Devastation of Pepper, The Dragon, with cuts, Mandringo's Pismires rebuffeted and retro-confounded, Is qui me dubitat, or a flap against the Maggot of Heresie, Efflorescentina Flosculorum, or a choice collection of F. (sic) Withers Poems or the like, I do not intend to meddle with it.

The maggot is the larva of the fly, and the zoea is the larva of the Crab.

Brown ant-like creatures, white maggot-like creatures, of several shapes and sizes, were hurrying up and down, as busy as human beings in Cheapside.

conceit, maggot, figment, myth, dream, vision, shadow, chimera; phantasm, phantasy; fantasy, fancy; whim, whimsey^, whimsy; vagary, rhapsody, romance, gest^, geste^, extravaganza; air drawn dagger, bugbear, nightmare.

Caprice N. caprice, fancy, humor; whim, whimsy, whimsey^, whimwham^; crotchet, capriccio, quirk, freak, maggot, fad, vagary, prank, fit, flimflam, escapade, boutade

V. be capricious &c adj.; have a maggot in the brain; take it into one's head, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; blow hot and cold; play fast and loose, play fantastic tricks; tourner casaque [Fr.].

[Object of desire] desideratum; want &c (requirement) 630; a consummation devoutly to be wished; attraction, magnet, allurement, fancy, temptation, seduction, fascination, prestige, height of one's ambition, idol; whim, whimsy, whimsey^; maggot; hobby, hobby-horse.

AN IGNORANT GLORY-HUNTER Is an insectum animal, for he is the maggot of opinion; his behaviour is another thing from himself, and is glued and but set on.

As a fly turns to a maggot, so the corruption of the cunning man is the generation of an empiric; his works fly forth in small volumes, yet not all, for many ride post to chandlers and tobacco shops in folio.

Moll, bit by a new maggot, tells me this morning she will have a great feast on Christmas day, and bids me order matters accordingly.

I don't want to disgust you; but the thing we looked at was a maggot.

"The maggot which had dropped from his disgusting leg of mutton had been an accident, and beyond even his horrible planning.

When his sneers against Lady Byron and her mother are recorded, it would lessen their effect if it were shown that he sneered at all man and womankind in turn; and that the friend of his choicest selection, or the mistress of his maddest love, were served no better, when the maggot (selfishness) bit, than his wife or his mother-in-law.

As single words were not always explosive enough to make a report equal to their feelings, they had recourse to compounds;"pert and prating popinjay," "hackneyed gutscraper," "maggot of corruption," "toad on a dung-heap," "snivelling sophisticating hound," are a few of the chain-shot which strike our eyes in turning over the yellow faded files.

I could not help comparing them to an over-grown maggot, and their motion is similar to that insect.

Hazlitt, himself a Radical, wrote of Shelley: "He has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in his speech, which mark out the philosophic fanatic.

A big, raw-boned animal, named Gentle Maggot, floundering along with one foot in the franc side an' tother in the enclosure, with two other feet that couldn't be simultaneously located, was leading, an' a chestnut named Coughdrop was a good second.

She passed three, got level with Coughdrop, passed 'er, an' thirty yards from home was neck with Gentle Maggot.

Bees, however, hatched in very old cells, will be somewhat smaller: as each maggot leaves a skin behind which, though thinner than the finest silk, layer after layer, contracts the cells, and somewhat compresses the future bee.

Mr. Fortune's maggot.

Mr. Fortune's maggot.

He would have chosen such a Wolf, a Canker, A Maggot-pate, to be his whole Executor?

"He's like a maggot in a fresh nut!"