Meaning of fly in the buttermilk | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A black person in a predominantly white group of people.
   colloquial
2. Synonym of fly in the ointment (“something that spoils something else”).

Examples

“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.”

CEFR level