Word.ws English Dictionary

flying in the face of

flying in the face of is the present participle and gerund of fly in the face of.

Meaning of fly in the face of

Verb

fly in the face of (third-person singular simple present flies in the face of, present participle flying in the face of, simple past flew in the face of, past participle flown in the face of)

  1. (idiomatic) To act in a manner highly contrary to; to counteract or contradict.
    • The new design is very edgy and certainly flies in the face of tradition.

Questions about flying in the face of

What is flying in the face of the present participle and gerund of?
Flying in the face of is the present participle and gerund of fly in the face of.

Words near flying in the face of in the dictionary

  1. flying helmet
  2. flying helmets
  3. flying high
  4. flying ice cube effect
  5. flying in
  6. flying in the face of
  7. flying into
  8. flying jennies
  9. flying jenny
  10. flying jib
  11. flying jib boom

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flying in the face of (page history and authors); fly in the face of (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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Cite this entry: “flying in the face of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flying_in_the_face_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.