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Fly in the ointment

Idiomatic Phrase
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A small problem or flaw that spoils or mars an otherwise satisfactory situation.

Detailed Definition
Biblical in origin—from Ecclesiastes 10:1, where dead flies corrupt precious ointment—this idiom captures the disproportionate power of small imperfections to ruin what is otherwise excellent. In poetry, it describes the intrusive detail that refuses to resolve into the poem's larger beauty, the single note of discord in an otherwise harmonious composition, or the moment of doubt that undermines joy. Poets invoke it to explore perfectionism, the vulnerability of the ideal to the actual, and the way minor flaws can become obsessive preoccupations. Its domestic imagery—ointment, flies—grounds existential frustration in the physical world, reminding readers that the infinite has a habit of being sabotaged by the trivially finite.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem about perfectionism might use the fly in the ointment to describe the single detail that, once noticed, makes the otherwise excellent impossible to accept — the obsessive's particular suffering; In a poem celebrating a day of almost-perfect happiness, the fly in the ointment is the intrusive thought, the small wrong note, the detail that prevents complete surrender to what is otherwise wonderful; The biblical origin of the phrase — from Ecclesiastes, the ancient observation that dead flies corrupt precious ointment — gives a poet access to the long tradition of wisdom literature that finds in small imperfections the figure of mortality's intrusion into the ideal; A love poem might describe the fly in the ointment of an otherwise excellent relationship — the single incompatibility that, small as it seems, changes the quality of everything around it; In a satirical poem about a political program that has almost everything right, the fly in the ointment is the single provision that reveals the ideological assumption that corrupts the whole; The idiom suits poems about the relationship between beauty and flaw, asking whether the perfect thing from which nothing can be subtracted might require the fly to complete it — the imperfection being the mark of the living, the real, the genuinely experienced rather than merely imagined
Additional Notes
This idiom comes from the idea that a tiny contaminant can spoil something valuable. In poetry, the “fly” may symbolise flaw, mortality, doubt, guilt, or social embarrassment. It is useful when an otherwise beautiful scene is disturbed by one troubling detail. Related images include perfume, ointment, rot, buzzing, blemish, and the fragility of perfection.
Also Known As
Spoil the broth Minor flaw
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