Meaning

noun minute two-winged mosquito-like fly lacking biting mouthparts; appear in dancing swarms especially near water

originFrom 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…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0