Word.ws English Dictionary

flan

/flæn/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/flan/

flan noun: a baked tart with a sweet or savoury filling in an open-topped pastry case.

flan: a baked tart with a sweet or savoury filling in an open-topped pastry case
Image: Kim, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

flan (plural flans)

  1. (Australia, UK) A baked tart with a sweet or savoury filling in an open-topped pastry case.
    • The menu includes a number of excellent fish dishes such as the […] broccoli flan.2004, Shawn Blore, Alexandra de Vries, Frommer's Brazil, →ISBN, page 175
  2. (Belize, US) A dessert of congealed custard, often topped with caramel, especially popular in Spanish-speaking countries.
    Synonyms:
    crème caramel
  3. A coin die.

Verb

flan (third-person singular simple present flans, present participle flanning, simple past and past participle flanned)

  1. To splay or bevel internally, as a window-pane.

Noun (2)

flan (plural flans)

  1. (informal, slang) A fan of the U.S. TV series Firefly.
    • (some) Firefly flans call themselves Browncoats (Remember, the hot movie from Universal is out this September! :)2005 January 29, P. Burrows, “Re: Name for Lost fans?”, in rec.arts.sf.tv (Usenet)
    • For what it's worth, I'm 27 and am a huge Firefly/Serenity flan.2006 June 18, Geoff Aldrich, “Re: SciFi promotion [Was Firefly fans skew older?]”, in alt.tv.firefly (Usenet)
    Synonyms:
    Browncoat

flan meaning in Indonesian

flan in Indonesian

baked sweet or savoury tart
flan

Synonyms of flan

Forms of flan

Noun
pluralflans
Verb
third-person singular presentflans
present participleflanning
past participleflanned
pastflanned

Origin of flan

Borrowed around 1846 from French flan (“cheesecake, custard tart, flan”), or in some uses (in reference to Spanish/Latin American flans) later from Spanish flan (itself from the French), both from Old French flaon (whence also Middle English flaon, flaun (“pie; cake”)), from Late Latin fladō (“flat cake”), from Frankish *flaþō (“flat cake”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleth₂- (“broad, flat”); compare German Fladen. Akin to Old High German flado (“flat cake, offering cake”). Doublet of flathe. Although the -n is generally believed to derive from the Late Latin accusative form (fladonem) of fladō (“flat cake”), it might alternatively derive from an inflected form of the Frankish word (such as the Frankish accusative *flaþan, or the like). For a similar case, see garden.

English, from a slip of the tongue by actor Nathan Fillion.

Words formed from flan

Words that rhyme with flan

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about flan

What does flan mean?
Flan means a baked tart with a sweet or savoury filling in an open-topped pastry case.
What is flan in Indonesian?
Flan in Indonesian is flan. See Flan meaning in Indonesian.
What part of speech is flan?
Flan can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce flan?
Flan is pronounced /flæn/ (UK).
What is the plural of flan?
The plural of flan is flans.

Words near flan in the dictionary

  1. flammules
  2. flams
  3. Flamstead
  4. Flamsteedian
  5. flamy
  6. flan
  7. Flanagan
  8. Flanagan Island
  9. Flanagans
  10. Flanary
  11. Flanarys

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flan (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-flan.wav.

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