flap.
Anything broad and flexible that hangs loose, or that is attached by one side or end and is easily moved.
Meaning & usage
Anything broad and flexible that hangs loose, or that is attached by one side or end and is easily moved.
a flap of a garment
The envelope flap seemed curiously wrinkled.
A hinged leaf.
the flaps of a table
the flap of a shutter
A hinged surface on the trailing edge of the wings of an aeroplane, used to increase lift and drag.
A side fin of a ray.
The motion of anything broad and loose, or a sound or stroke made with it.
the flap of a sail
the flap of a wing
A controversy, scandal, stir, or upset.
The comment caused quite a flap in the newspapers.
A consonant sound made by a single muscle contraction, such as the sound /ɾ/ in the standard American English pronunciation of body.
A piece of tissue incompletely detached from the body, as an intermediate stage of plastic surgery.
The labia, the vulva.
A blow or slap (especially to the face).
A young prostitute.
A connected component of the induced subgraph formed by deleting a set of vertices.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English flap, flappe (“a slap; blow; buffet; fly-flap; something flexible or loose; flap”), related to Saterland Frisian Flappert (“wing, flipper”), Middle Dutch flabbe (“a blow; slap on the face; fly-flap; flap”) (modern Dutch flap (“flap”)), Middle Low German flabbe, vlabbe, flebbe, from the verb (see below). Related also to English flab and flabby.
To move (something broad and loose) up and down.
The crow slowly flapped its wings.
Startled, the wood pigeon flew off, its wings flapping noisily.
To move loosely back and forth.
The flag flapped in the breeze.
For a goalkeeper to weakly attempt to play a flighted ball with the hands, failing to control it.
To pronounce (something) as a flap consonant.
To be pronounced with a flap consonant.
To be advertised as being available and then unavailable (or available by different routes) in rapid succession.
To talk, especially in a manner seen as excessive, nagging or annoying.
She stay flappin' at me.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English flappen (“to flap, clap, slap, strike”), related to Dutch flappen (“to flap”), German Low German flappen (“to flap”), German flappen (“to flap”), Dutch flabberen (“to flit, flap”). Probably ultimately imitative.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.