Word.ws English Dictionary

flusk

flusk verb: to make a whirring or fluttering sound.

Verb

flusk (third-person singular simple present flusks, present participle flusking, simple past and past participle flusked)

  1. (Northern England, intransitive) To make a whirring or fluttering sound.
  2. (Northern England, intransitive) To fly at; ruffle up the feathers.
  3. (Northern England, intransitive) To quarrel.
  4. (Northern England, transitive) To startle or confuse.

Noun

flusk (plural flusks)

  1. (Northern England) A whirring sound.
  2. (Northern England) A flutter.
  3. (Northern England) A quarrel, contention, skirmish, fight.

Forms of flusk

Verb
third-person singular presentflusks
present participleflusking
past participleflusked
pastflusked
Noun
pluralflusks

Origin of flusk

Uncertain. Likely from Middle English *flusken, a variant of flusshen (“to move rapidly, dart”), the same origin as flush. Perhaps from Old Norse *flugsa (“to flap, flutter”), from Proto-Germanic *flugisōną (“to flutter”); compare Norwegian Nynorsk flugsa (“to flutter”), Norwegian Bokmål flugse (“to flutter”). Compare also Norwegian flogsa, flogse (“to run around, frolic, flirt”), Faroese flogsa (“to gad about, solicit”).

Words formed from flusk

Questions about flusk

What does flusk mean?
Flusk means to make a whirring or fluttering sound.
What part of speech is flusk?
Flusk can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of flusk?
The past tense of flusk is flusked.

Words near flusk in the dictionary

  1. flushometers
  2. flusht
  3. flushwork
  4. flushy
  5. flusilazole
  6. flusk
  7. flusked
  8. flusker
  9. fluskered
  10. fluskering
  11. fluskers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flusk (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: “flusk.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flusk. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.