flehman
flehman is the nonstandard form of flehmen.
Meaning of flehmen
Noun
flehmen (countable and uncountable, plural flehmens)
- Flaring of the lip in mammals, associated with intensive smelling; flehming.
- During the preliminary phase of courtship between captive animals, Matthew Gaughwin observed flehmen on a number of occasions when the male sniffed intensely at areas of ground where the female had previously urinated and once when the male had sniffed the female's cloacal region.2009, Barbara Triggs, Wombats, page 65
Noun capitalized: Flehman
Flehman (plural not attested)
- Nonstandard form of flehmen.
Origin of flehman
From German flehmen. Respelled apparently under the influence of the common name-ending -man, due to the mistaken belief that the word (used in compounds like flehmen response) was an eponym. The term is sometimes capitalized (Flehmen, Flehman) for the same reason).
From German flehmen. Respelled and capitalized apparently under the influence of the common name-ending -man and due to the mistaken belief that the word (used in compounds like flehmen response) was an eponym.
Questions about flehman
- What is flehman the nonstandard form of?
- Flehman is the nonstandard form of flehmen.
- What part of speech is flehman?
- Flehman is a noun.
Words near flehman in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: flehman (page history and authors); Flehman (page history and authors); flehmen (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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Cite this entry: “flehman.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flehman. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.