Word.ws English Dictionary

flies on the wall

flies on the wall is the plural of fly on the wall.

Meaning of fly on the wall

Noun

fly on the wall (plural flies on the wall)

  1. (idiomatic) A quiet, non-participating, or unseen observer; an eavesdropper or witness.
    • James W. Gerard, ex-Ambassador to Germany, the first speaker of the evening, said that at that moment he would like to be a fly on the wall of the palace at Potsdam to hear what the Potsdam gang were saying about our soldiers.1918 August 9, “Clark Would Draft Even Men of 68”, in New York Times, retrieved 28 Oct 2008, page 11

Questions about flies on the wall

What is flies on the wall the plural of?
Flies on the wall is the plural of fly on the wall.

Words near flies on the wall in the dictionary

  1. flies low
  2. flies off
  3. flies off at a tangent
  4. flies off the handle
  5. flies off the shelves
  6. flies on the wall
  7. flies out
  8. flies out of the traps
  9. flies solo
  10. flies the blue pigeon
  11. flies the coop

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flies on the wall (page history and authors); fly on the wall (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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