Word.ws English Dictionary

filk

/fɪlk/

filk adjective: about or inspired by science fiction, fantasy, horror, science, and/or subjects of interest to fans of speculative fiction; frequently, being a song whose lyrics have been altered to refer to science fiction; parodying. (However, much filk music is original rather than parodic.).

Adjective

filk (not comparable)

  1. About or inspired by science fiction, fantasy, horror, science, and/or subjects of interest to fans of speculative fiction; frequently, being a song whose lyrics have been altered to refer to science fiction; parodying. (However, much filk music is original rather than parodic.)
    • The blame/credit (choose one) for the first filk song is a little dubious. Like the man who tried to sit on two stools, it falls in the middle, between Poul Anderson who wrote a filk song called Barbarous Allen and Karen Anderson who egged him on and published it in Zed #774.1955 June, Karen Anderson, Poul Anderson (writing as "Petronius Arbiter Kingsley"), “Filk Song”, in Die Zeitschrift für Vollständigen Unsinn (aka The Zed), number 780, page 13
    • And the permanent exhibit area offers a filk performance on a small stage so that neophytes can sample more esoteric interests.2000, Camille Bacon-Smith, Science Fiction Culture, University of Pennsylvania Press, →ISBN, page 38

Noun

filk (countable and uncountable, plural filks)

  1. Filk music.
    • Filk turns commercial culture back into folk culture, existing as a mediator between two musical traditions. Its raw materials come from commercial culture; its logic is from folk culture.1992, Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture, Routledge, →ISBN, page 270
    • The style of music generally used for creating filk is folk or popular music. That brings up one of the key points. Most, but not all, filk is created by "borrowing" the music of other songs and creating lyrics to fit the singer's particular circle of fandom.2006, Gary Hill, The Strange Sound of Cthulhu: Music Inspired by the Writings of H.P. Lovecraft, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 216
  2. In general
    • Welcome to Harry Potter Filks, with nearly 3400 filks (including several dozen full-length musicals) by more than 250 authors from at least five continents, all on Rowling-related themes.2001, Harry Potter Filks
  3. A filk song written as a parody of, or in the form of and with reference to, another song (which need not itself be a filk song). Compare verb transitive sense.
    • He has recently started to accompany himself on the piano, and created such wonderful songs as "The Soul" (filk of "The Ship") and "Internal Knight".2006, citation in the Filk Hall of Fame

Verb

filk (third-person singular simple present filks, present participle filking, simple past and past participle filked)

  1. (intransitive) To perform filk music.
    • I could have filked all night1978, Sarah Elizabeth Miller, I Could Have Filked All Night, page 33
  2. (intransitive) To participate in a filk circle, including singing along.
  3. (transitive) To write a parody of (a song).
    • 1997 (?: "July A.S. XXXI") Medieval Melodies for Filking
      However, the practice of filking, of taking an existing melody and providing new, usually topical and/or satirical, lyrics, is in fact the direct counterpart of the Medieval practice of writing contrafacta.

Forms of filk

Noun
pluralfilks
Verb
third-person singular presentfilks
present participlefilking
past participlefilked
pastfilked

Origin of filk

Originally "filk music" was a typo for "folk music" in a never-published essay on the influence of Science Fiction and Fantasy on folk music. Its first known deliberate use was by Karen Kruse Anderson in Die Zeitschrift für Vollständigen Unsinn (The Journal for Utter Nonsense) #774 (June 1953), for a song written by science-fiction author Poul Anderson.

Words formed from filk

Words that rhyme with filk

12 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about filk

What does filk mean?
Filk means about or inspired by science fiction, fantasy, horror, science, and/or subjects of interest to fans of speculative fiction; frequently, being a song whose lyrics have been altered to refer to science fiction; parodying. (However, much filk music is original rather than parodic.).
What part of speech is filk?
Filk can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce filk?
Filk is pronounced /fɪlk/.

Words near filk in the dictionary

  1. Filistin
  2. Filisur
  3. Filitheyo
  4. filius nullius
  5. filius philosophorum
  6. filk
  7. filkable
  8. filked
  9. filker
  10. filkers
  11. Filkin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: filk (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-filk.wav.

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