Word.ws English Dictionary

flatiron

flatiron noun: a simple iron (for pressing laundry) which is heated on a stove. Also the ellipsis of flat iron steak.

Noun

flatiron (plural flatirons)

  1. A simple iron (for pressing laundry) which is heated on a stove.
    • The evil-smelling larrikin, beer-imbued —
      The evil-loving brute-man homeward goes,
      He kicks his dirty children with his boot,
      Cursing their hunger, — and his poor worn wife
      With cold flat-irons and handled broom awaits
      His coming, to revile his drinking hard.1881 December 3, Sydney Punch, page 8, column 2
  2. A pair of metal tongs with heated ceramic plates used for straightening hair.
    Synonyms:
    straightener
  3. (especially) a quadrilateral with two parallel sides, one of which is very short, and whose non-parallel sides are longer than either parallel side.
  4. A steeply sloping triangular landform created by the differential erosion of a steeply dipping, erosion-resistant layer of rock overlying softer strata.

Adjective

flatiron (not comparable)

  1. Having a flatiron shape.
    • a flatiron building
    • The street down which Warwick had come intersected Front Street at a sharp angle in front of the old hotel, forming a sort of flatiron block at the junction, known as Liberty Point1900, Charles W. Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars

Proper noun capitalized: Flatiron

Flatiron

  1. A district of Manhattan, New York City, United States.
    • On a recent Thursday, Vani Hari, perhaps Public Enemy No. 1 of big food companies, sat at ABC Kitchen in the Flatiron district wearing a purple sweater with a giant pink heart and pink heart-shaped crystal earrings.2015 March 13, Courtney Rubin, “Taking On the Food Industry, One Blog Post at a Time”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 20 Mar 2015

Also used as

flatiron is also the ellipsis of flat iron steak.

Synonyms of flatiron

Forms of flatiron

pluralflatirons
alternative formflat iron
alternative formflat-iron

Origin of flatiron

From flat + iron.

From flat + iron, see flatiron.

Words formed from flatiron

Phrases with flatiron

Questions about flatiron

What does flatiron mean?
Flatiron means a simple iron (for pressing laundry) which is heated on a stove.
What part of speech is flatiron?
Flatiron can be a noun, an adjective or a proper noun.
What is the plural of flatiron?
The plural of flatiron is flatirons.

Words near flatiron in the dictionary

  1. flatid
  2. flatids
  3. flatification
  4. flatifications
  5. flation
  6. flatiron
  7. flatiron steak
  8. flatiron steaks
  9. flatirons
  10. flative
  11. flatland

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flatiron (page history and authors); Flatiron (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)-Flame, not lame-flatiron.wav.

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