on the fly

1. 1.

   while in motion

   “he caught the punt on the fly”
2. 2.

   on the run or in a hurry

   “she wrote those letters on the fly”

   Synonymshurridly

Questions about on the fly

What does on the fly mean?

on the fly means "while in motion". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for on the fly?

Close synonyms include hurridly. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is on the fly a common word?

on the fly is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.