Word.ws English Dictionary

flehmen

/ˈfleɪmən/

flehmen is the alternative form of flehm.

Meaning of flehm

Verb

flehm (third-person singular simple present flehms, present participle flehming, simple past and past participle flehmed)

  1. (intransitive) To exhibit the flehmen response, i.e., to draw back the lips, allowing scent to reach the Jacobson’s organ, an auxiliary olfactory organ found in many animals.

Noun (1)

flehmen (countable and uncountable, plural flehmens)

  1. (especially) 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
    • Ladewig and Hart showed that when a male goat displayed flehmen after investigating female urine containing a tracer material, the urine was found throughout the vomeronasal organ.2006, Ernst Knobil, Jimmy D. Neill, Knobil and Neill's Physiology of Reproduction, page 2043

Noun (2) capitalized: Flehmen

Flehmen (plural not attested)

  1. (no plural, nonstandard) Nonstandard form of flehmen.

Forms of flehmen

Verb
third-person singular presentflehmens
present participleflehmening
past participleflehmened
pastflehmened
alternative formflehm
alternative formflehman
alternative formFlehmen
alternative formFlehman
Noun
pluralflehmens

Origin of flehmen

From German flehmen, from Upper Saxon German flemmen (“to look spiteful”).

Capitalized apparently due to the mistaken belief that the word (used in compounds like flehmen response) was an eponym.

Words formed from flehmen

Phrases with flehmen

Words that rhyme with flehmen

1 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about flehmen

What does flehmen mean?
Flehmen means flaring of the lip in mammals, associated with intensive smelling; flehming.
What is flehmen the alternative form of?
Flehmen is the alternative form of flehm.
What part of speech is flehmen?
Flehmen is a noun.
How do you pronounce flehmen?
Flehmen is pronounced /ˈfleɪmən/.
What is the plural of flehmen?
The plural of flehmen is flehmens.

Words near flehmen in the dictionary

  1. flegms
  2. flegs
  3. flehm
  4. flehman
  5. flehmed
  6. flehmen
  7. flehmen response
  8. flehmen responses
  9. flehmened
  10. flehmening
  11. flehmens

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flehmen (page history and authors); Flehmen (page history and authors); flehm (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: “flehmen.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flehmen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.