false flag

false flag noun: a ruse, in the days of sail, in which an attacking ship would fly the colours of its enemy until close enough to open fire.

Noun

false flag (plural false flags)

A ruse, in the days of sail, in which an attacking ship would fly the colours of its enemy until close enough to open fire.
A diversionary or propaganda tactic of deceiving an adversary into thinking that an operation was carried out by another party.
- Using what the bureau calls a "False Flag" operation, F.B.I. agents posing as Russian intelligence officers contacted Mr. Pitts in August 1995, long after it believed he had ceased his spying activities, and feigned interest in reactivating him as a means of confirming his spying activities and...1996 December, David Johnston, “F.B.I. Supervisor Charged With Spying for Russians”, in The New York Times
- Now, that is not just offensive, it’s stupid. If the government had actually hired child actors, there is no way their stage parents would have stopped talking about it. “Well, he didn’t get the Tide commercial, but he did book a leading role in a government-sponsored false-flag attack! It’s the...2017, Tim Carvell, Josh Gondelman, Dan Gurewitch, Jeff Maurer, Ben Silva, Will Tracy, Jill Twiss, Seena Vali, Julie Weiner, “Trump vs. Truth”, in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 4, episode...

false flag (third-person singular simple present false flags, present participle false flagging, simple past and past participle false flagged)

(informal, transitive) To target someone or something with a false flag or ruse.
- He instinctively false-flagged Arthur's information. There was no reason to expose the CIA or one of its deep-cover agents.1992, Steven Hartov, The Heat of Ramadan, page 424
- Some of its best agents have been Arabs false-flagged to believe that they were being paid by some other country or alliance.1996, John Laffin, Brassey's Book of Espionage, page 16

Noun
plural	false flags
alternative form	false-flag
Verb
third-person singular present	false flags
present participle	false flagging
past participle	false flagged
past	false flagged

What does false flag mean?: False flag means a ruse, in the days of sail, in which an attacking ship would fly the colours of its enemy until close enough to open fire.
What part of speech is false flag?: False flag can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of false flag?: The plural of false flag is false flags.

Adapted from Wiktionary: false flag (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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Cite this entry: “false flag.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/false_flag. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.