fly in the buttermilk
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.94 in modern English
35
Scrabble Score
18
Letters
4
Syllables
13
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Synonym of fly in the ointment (“something that spoils something else”).
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "Once on-island, the black colony did not want to be reminded by whites or blacks of the racial divisions that existed “off-island.” Visitors did not want to be flies in the buttermilk […]"
- "Discovery of this document was a fly in the buttermilk of Tattenai."
- "As life has a way of doing sometimes, just when things are going well, something comes along and puts a fly in the buttermilk. Two things happened in 1905 that changed things a lot for me. First off, the hotel burned down."