fly in the teeth of

1. 1.

   go against

   “This action flies in the face of the agreement”

   Synonymsfly in the face of

   Broaderviolate

Questions about fly in the teeth of

What does fly in the teeth of mean?

fly in the teeth of means "go against".

What is another word for fly in the teeth of?

Close synonyms include fly in the face 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 teeth of a common word?

fly in the teeth 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.