Word.ws English Dictionary

flanker

Syllables: flan·kerUK/ˈflæŋkə//ˈflæŋkɚ/

flanker noun: a player who plays in the back row of the scrum.

Noun

flanker (plural flankers)

  1. A player who plays in the back row of the scrum.
  2. A wide receiver who lines up behind the line of scrimmage.
  3. A fortification or soldier projecting so as to defend another work or to command the flank of an assailing body.
    • About two hours...they had been about the house before they prevailed to fire it (which they did with Flax and Hemp, which they brought out of the Barn, and there being no defence about the House, only two Flankers at two opposite corners and one of them not finished) they fired it once and one...1675, The Captivity of Mary Rowlandson, from The Portable Native American Indian Reader, New York: Penguin Books, 1977, page 312
    • [The planters’ houses] were frequently constructed with flankers and loopholes, for the purpose of firing upon the assailants when they approached so near.1803, Robert Charles Dallas, The History of the Maroons, London: Longman and Rees, Volume 1, Letter 2, p. 27
  4. One of a pair of large upright monoliths erected on either end of the recumbent, in recumbent stone circles of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and the counties of Cork and Kerry in south-west of Ireland.
  5. A usually lower-end brand or product introduced in order to target competitors and protect a company's main market share.
    Synonyms:
    fighter, flanker brand, fighter brand
  6. (perfumery) Newly created perfume that shares some attributes of an already existing perfume.

Verb

flanker (third-person singular simple present flankers, present participle flankering, simple past and past participle flankered)

  1. (obsolete) To defend by lateral fortifications.
    • the Castle was neither ſo weakly mann'd nor flanker'd as they were made belive1634, T[homas] H[erbert], A Relation of Some Yeares Trauaile, Begunne Anno 1626. into Afrique and the Greater Asia, […], London: […] William Stansby, and Jacob Bloome, →OCLC
  2. (obsolete) To attack sideways.
    • […] to my observation in our Climates, where those sharp winds do rather flanker than blow fully opposite upon our Plantations, they thrive best […]1670, John Evelyn, Sylva or, A Discourse of Forest-Trees, and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesties Dominions, London, Chapter 3, “Of the Oak,” p. 19

Synonyms of flanker

  • fighter
  • flanker brand
  • fighter brand

Forms of flanker

Noun
pluralflankers
Verb
third-person singular presentflankers
present participleflankering
past participleflankered
pastflankered

Plural of flanker: flankers

Origin of flanker

From flank + -er. The verb is from the noun (sense 3).

Phrases with flanker

Words that rhyme with flanker

6 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about flanker

What does flanker mean?
Flanker means a player who plays in the back row of the scrum.
What part of speech is flanker?
Flanker can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce flanker?
Flanker is pronounced /ˈflæŋkə/ (UK).
What is the plural of flanker?
The plural of flanker is flankers.

Words near flanker in the dictionary

  1. flank steak
  2. flank steaks
  3. flankable
  4. flanked
  5. flanken
  6. flanker
  7. flankerback
  8. flankerbacks
  9. flankered
  10. flankering
  11. flankers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flanker (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-us-flanker.oga.

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