Word.ws English Dictionary

flack

/flæk/

flack verb: to flutter; palpitate. Also the alternative spelling of flak.

Verb (1)

flack (third-person singular simple present flacks, present participle flacking, simple past and past participle flacked)

  1. (intransitive, obsolete) To flutter; palpitate.
  2. (UK, dialectal, intransitive) To hang loosely; flag.
  3. (UK, dialectal, transitive) To beat by flapping.

Noun

flack (plural flacks)

  1. (Canada, US) A publicist, a publicity agent.
    • Edward Bernay, who was a consultant to the US Delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference which terminated the first World War (and who finally wound up as a flack for the United Fruit Company in Latin America), believed that propaganda and its covert marketing could effectively alter the will of...1998, Winston Smith, Art Crime: The Montage Art of Winston Smith, page 25
    • Thought you were flack," she said.
      "I'm not flack."
      "All right, P.R., a reporter, a novelist."1999, Patricia Cornwell, The Southern Cross, page 233

Verb (2)

flack (third-person singular simple present flacks, present participle flacking, simple past and past participle flacked)

  1. (Canada, US) To publicise, to promote.
    • [..] he told funny stories about his early days in the theater district, flacking shows up and down the street, but Klara wasn’t listening.1997, Don DeLillo, Underworld

Proper noun capitalized: Flack

Flack

  1. A surname.

Also used as

flack is also the alternative spelling of flak.

Forms of flack

Verb
third-person singular presentflacks
present participleflacking
past participleflacked
pastflacked
Noun
pluralflacks

Plural of flack: flacks

Origin of flack

From Middle English flacken (“to palpitate, flutter”), from Old English *flaccian, from Proto-West Germanic *flakkōn, from Proto-Germanic *flakkōną (“to beat”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleḱ-, which could be related to Ancient Greek πλάζω (plázō, “to turn away from”). Akin to Middle Dutch vlacken (“to flicker, flash, sparkle”), Danish flakke (“to wander”), Swedish flacka (“to rove, rove about, ramble”), Icelandic flakka (“to move”). Compare also Icelandic flaka (“to flap, hang loose”), Swedish flaxa (“to flap, flutter”).

Most likely flak.

Variant of flak.

Words formed from flack

Phrases with flack

Words that rhyme with flack

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about flack

What does flack mean?
Flack means to flutter; palpitate.
What part of speech is flack?
Flack can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce flack?
Flack is pronounced /flæk/.
What is the past tense of flack?
The past tense of flack is flacked.

Words near flack in the dictionary

  1. Flacian
  2. Flacianism
  3. Flacianist
  4. Flacianists
  5. Flacians
  6. flack
  7. flack catcher
  8. flack catchers
  9. flack-catcher
  10. flack-catchers
  11. flacked

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flack (page history and authors); Flack (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-flack.ogg.

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