Word.ws English Dictionary

flies in the ointment

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

Meaning of fly in the ointment

Noun

fly in the ointment (plural flies in the ointment)

  1. (idiomatic) Something (especially a minor thing) which ruins or spoils everything else, or makes it less pleasant; a nuisance or problem; a disagreeable or unpleasant detail.
    • And yet, in truth, he was not then a child of God. His pride and uncharitableness, were flies in the ointment.1807, [Edward Wesley Hare], “Letter V”, in Genuine Methodism Acquitted, and Spurious Methodism Condemned; […] , Rochdale, Lancashire: […] J. Hartley; […], →OCLC, paragraph 5, page 75

Questions about flies in the ointment

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

Words near flies in the ointment in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flies in the ointment (page history and authors); fly in the ointment (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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