fly in the face of

1. 1.

   go against

   “This action flies in the face of the agreement”

   Synonymsfly in the teeth of

   Broaderviolate

Questions about fly in the face of

What does fly in the face of mean?

fly in the face of means "go against".

What is another word for fly in the face of?

Close synonyms include fly in the teeth of. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is fly in the face of a common word?

fly in the face of is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.