Word.ws English Dictionary

flies in the buttermilk

flies in the buttermilk is the plural of fly in the buttermilk.

Meaning of fly in the buttermilk

Noun

fly in the buttermilk (plural flies in the buttermilk)

  1. (colloquial) A black person in a predominantly white group of people.
    • You can do the same in parts of Ward Three and see black folks sprinkled like “flies in the buttermilk.” Two Districts of Columbia, two different realities.2008, Bernestine Singley, When Race Becomes Real, page 108
  2. Synonym of fly in the ointment (“something that spoils something else”).
    • Discovery of this document was a fly in the buttermilk of Tattenai.2013, Lewis P. Hussell, A Commentary on Amos, Ezra, Esther, Haggai, Nehemiah, page 246

Questions about flies in the buttermilk

What is flies in the buttermilk the plural of?
Flies in the buttermilk is the plural of fly in the buttermilk.

Words near flies in the buttermilk in the dictionary

  1. flies blind
  2. flies by
  3. flies by the seat of one's pants
  4. flies high
  5. flies in
  6. flies in the buttermilk
  7. flies in the face of
  8. flies in the ointment
  9. flies into
  10. flies like a bird
  11. flies low

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flies in the buttermilk (page history and authors); fly in the buttermilk (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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